best battery for glow plug?
 

Ok the last time I had a cox motor I had a 1.5 volt battery that came from cox..But I dont have a clue on what to use.Would the D size work?And how many?thanks Kevin

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Hey Kevin - the best battery I've used for starting Coxes is two Alkaline "D" cells wired in parallel - that's "+ to +" and "- to -" - then I attach the glow plug clip to that. Try to avoid battery holders, in this application they're a source of frustration with their flaky connections. I solder directly to the cells with a 100 watt soldering gun. A higher wattage gun (or iron) gets the area hot enough to solder quickly without unnecessary heat soaking of the area. Use electrical (or duct) tape to bundle the cells together and strain-relief the wires. I've used a battery like this for a whole season and have often used it to start larger engines when the ole ni-starter was exhausted.

Hope this helps!

-Joe

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Voltage, as in 1.25, is the critical thing. Many glow starters use a C or sub C rechargeable. A D would work fine.

Tom

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Our local hobby shop is primarily cars and trucks oriented. I bought a li-po glow lighter there a couple of months ago and its the cat's pajamas. I myself have only used it on my little TDs but several others of my clubmates have used it too.

True 1.5 volts. Plenty of amps. doesn't go flat or die like nickel-based batteries. About $30 and comes with a charger. I forget who makes it but I'll check if anybody is interested.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Im interested!

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I'm old school and still use the big hobby batteries that look like a lantern battery, but 1 1/2 volts and have no issues at all with them.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I'm currently testing out a design that would be similar to the last 'battery box' Cox/Estes used, and would require 2 D-Cell batteries. Hope to have it ready soon.

Regards, Matt.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I use a 2500 MAH Sanyo "sub C" in a $2.00 Radio Shack with soldered connections to a Du-bro Kwick clip for the standard glow plugs and a NOS Sullivan clip ( I found on ebay).

I custom bent the Sullivan clip to work with the Cox glow heads and the Galbreath / Nelson plug combos and it's far better then my old Cox clip

The Sub C is cheap and though as nails. In a pinch you can "shock" charge it at 2 or 3 C and have ready power in minutes.. When it's fully charged you're good for several day's worth of flying. I used the 2 D thing for a while but got tired of buying new ones.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Here's a pointer to the li-po glow lighter.

http://www.dynamiterc.com/Products/D...ProdID=DYN1926

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Even though I'm interested in the Lipo deal, I have to admit I still use a globee "Fireplug" with the 2V lead acid battery in it. You can still get those Cyclon 2V 5 amp hour batteries at Batteries Plus, and I recently scored two more fireplugs along with 4 packages of spare parts - the little fuse along with the red & black caps for the top. I'm good to go for a long time..

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I use the same - works like a champ.

andrew

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

My glow ignitor battery is a home made 6 cell monster pack made of 1900mah "C" cells. It hasn't seemed very healthy lately (found it dead after a period of non-use this year and it false peaked on my Astro charger) so I gave it a full charge and decided to take an old nasty plug and do a run time test. I gave up at 2-1/2 hours because I had to go to bed. [8D]

One of the nicer things about a big pack, aside from the monster capacity is that if I decide to go flying on a whim and find it's dead I can put it on the charger and absolutely hammer it with current to get some energy into the pack. Since it's a parallel wired pack the 8 amps going in end up divided by 6 which is well within normal charge rates for a 1900mah cell. By the time I have all my crap packed into the car the battery has enough juice in it to fly for the day!

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

MPI sells a 5 amp D cell with tabs. It will last for years and keeps a glow plug lit for HOURS.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Personally, I use a 12V 7 A.h SLA battery with a powerpanel. Light the glow plug and turn an electric starter (for my larger engines). Nice thing is that I swop it every second week or so with my home alarm system's battery, so it is kept charged constantly.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Power panel and electric starters etc are such an overkill for anything around .15 and below, as I see it. One of the advantages with the small planes is to minimize the whole equipment. Two planes and all the stuff needed can then easily be carried to the field in one go. We have about 500m from the parking to the field and some people have a whole trolley with stuff for just one plane.

I haven't seen the Lipo version around here, sounds like a good idea. The glowdrivers with a single cell NiMh are a such a pain, escpecially now in the cold. I usually resort to two D cells in paralell.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

LiPo all the way.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

What about the fire hazard, does it come with a Lipo safety bag?

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

HI
tower hobby sells a glo igniter for 6.99 ( A GRAY COLOR ) it takes replaceable C batteries i use 2300 rechargable battery from walmart in iti have two bats with me at all timesi have never had to go to the second or run out of batteryif i have used the battery for more than 1 hours time when trying to solve a starting problem-use to run out of battery all the time before thischeep and reliablethat is hard to beat flying for 20 years very much more than most-BEST REGARDS TONY

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I use a 12 v battery also with a power panel. Like it has been stated here in a previous post it IS OVERKILL. The last 1/2 a event i flew at everyone flying their 1/2a stuff was borrowing my set up to start their motors after their batterys just couldnt cut it. I can start glow plugs and run starters for the entire weekend with no problems, other than getting strange looks when the battery i use is larger than the planes! ( allmost)......:DGene

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Here is a pic of my set up....Gene

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I've got an ancient Glo Bee but it's hard to find the single cells to fit that are not shelf dead. The last one I bought (the third or fourth cell over the course of about 30 years) was poor right from the start and I only got a season from it before it was useless.

For ease and practicality and since I fly electrics as well I like the idea of a switching regulator to reduce a 2S Lipo down to 1.5 volts. The sort I'd want to make up would use an inductor in the circuit so it acts more or less like a transformer in that it'll reduce the peak current from the pack and keep the flow through the plug a trifle more steady.

Although another way to do this would be to just use a glow driver panel with a 3S Lipo pack and the 11.5'ish volts would be "good enough" for the panel to operate.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Went with this and love it.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=791968

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

Look here for some options. http://www.darrolcady.com/Accessorie...ies_flight.htm The platinum driver I have converted to a LiPo, 2 S and it works great. In fact several of the local racers had done the same with no issues.

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

I have used the same idea the ProBroJoe mentioned above with 2 D size batteries. I hot glue them together and use the copper braid to solder the batteries in parallel. This setup holds its charge for a long time (at least a year).

In the past, I have used the Gates 2 volt batteries out of the hallway emergency lights found in buildings. A friend in our club worked for a business maintaining these batteries and would pass on to us the older used ones. They came out right in between 1.5 and 2.0 volts (depending upon age) and worked great. We would just add alligator clips to an old RX / TX charger to charge them back up. They lasted a long time as well for what we used them for in the flying season during summer.

Brian

RE: best battery for glow plug?
 

A Sullivan M058 plus a dry "D" cell glow starter works for me.
http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXPZ89&P=7
Dave