How do your charge / run in your batteries?

Personally,

Very light timed flying, starting with only a few minutes and increasing the time depending whats mah is put back into the battery.
Never even approaching a 80% discharge. Try to stay @ 3.8V per cell or greater.

0.5C charge for the first 10 charges, then 1C after that.

Even some of the cheaper batteries from HK seem to be holding up well, 50+ charges on some of them, they owe us nothing.

What does everyone do, anything different that works?

(Batteries charged and balanced with 2 BC6's)

I never drain my lipos below 3.7/3.8v per cell, my Ni-MH's I run till the rc vehicle won't go no mo

I charge my batteries at 1A per 1000mAh (like 2200mAh at 2.2A)

I use a Thunder AC6 and a IMax B5, both are balance chargers and both work great

Run my MCX almost up to the very end of the charge and use the USB charger from RPC Electronics (aka KE4NYV from RC universe forum) so far the cells are holding up well.

Charged my HBFP lipo once with the E-sky charger, now I use the E-flite balance charger and have installed battery alarms. While learning with the HBFP I've only run the lipo down to 3.85, but will probably run it a little lower when I learn to fly it.

Is that a good rule of thumb or THE rule? 1.0amp per 1000?
How do you know or figure the 80%thing when your in the air. I just go till it will no longer stay up. Is that to long? Do you check voltage after?
Sorry I'm pretty dumb with Ele. stuff..

Anybody got any zippy 22V 5000mah? How do they work? I'm still waitint for mine from Hobby king (B/O)
Can you connect two 11.1 votl packs together? how?

Fatdaddy wrote:

Is that a good rule of thumb or THE rule? 1.0amp per 1000?
How do you know or figure the 80%thing when your in the air. I just go till it will no longer stay up. Is that to long? Do you check voltage after?
Sorry I'm pretty dumb with Ele. stuff..

Anybody got any zippy 22V 5000mah? How do they work? I'm still waitint for mine from Hobby king (B/O)
Can you connect two 11.1 votl packs together? how?

Yes absolutely, the vast majority of Lipo batteries shouldn't be charged any greater than 1C (1A per 1000mah). Some do support 2C but cost the earth.

Waiting until xyz can no longer stay airborn is in all honestly too long.
Better speed controllers will pulse the power or you can set a cutoff so you can't over discharge your pack.
A decent charger will tell you the starting voltage when it begins to charge, or you could use a multimeter.

The Zippy 22.2V 5000mah packs have been getting good reviews and yes you can connect 2 11.1v packs together, use a serial adapter. Remember though 2 x 2200mah packs will give you 1 22.2v 2200mah pack, 4 x 2200mah with 2 pairs in parallel will give you 1 x 22.2v 4400mah cell equivalent.

Hope thats answered some of your questions.

I always keep my flights around 6-8min. I rarely fly longer then that at one time so I don''t have to worry about draining them to far but I also just check the voltage compared to my flight time and adjust it accordingly so you can get the longest flight time.

I have 4 5S1P's from Hobbycity, I love them.

Serial, I suck at electrics so please explain the connection of wires so I can make one up. I got a bunch of the zippy 2200 3p Will two of those be good to run the ESmart?
Atleast to do a hoover to set up blade tracking.
Thanks guys

they would all have to be exactly the same but I know a guy over on rcgroups had his ES600 go down in flames due to a battery failure from running that kind of set up but then again alot have done it with no problems, I was gonna but then I saw how cheap the 5 cells were I and didn't feel it was worth the extra time and trouble dealing with 4 batteries but heres a pic