Yep, you guys are right, you can burn through more than a 4000 pack can handle. I shouldn't have made an absolute statement. As they say "Your Mileage May Vary" and that can be heavily influenced by flying style and airframe. I should have stated that you don't TYPICALLY need 5000 packs for anything being flown in 2011.

For me, with my power setup and airframe I can probably make the 4000 work in almost all conditions. A 4500 would be just right. They didn't have the 4500 available yet so I'm trying the 4000. At about $60 per pack it is worth a try.

This should do OK for most of the conditions I fly in. I do have the TP 5000's for those super windy times. Hopefully I won't be using the 5000's much. I only had to pull that club out of the bag a couple times this year. I flew all my contest F11 flights with the 4350's. I noticed a big difference between power consumption per flight on my Visa vs my Passport. I was running 3600-3800 on a regular basis with the Passport for P11. Same motor and ESC on the Visa typically runs 3000-3200. Its lighter and less draggy.

For F11 I run 3200-3600 or so on the Visa, maybe 3800 in 15mph wind. The Passport is usually over 3800 and I've been over 4000 in the wind. But even then, I think that 5000 is still larger than required.

So, yes, we do need the proper caveats.

One of the other things I am going to do with these packs is to see how they stand up to constant pounding at or over 80% discharge. If you occasionally exceed 80% discharge then you are probably going to be OK. Drain them 90% every flight and they'll probably have an early trip to the salt water tank. These are an experiment for me so I'll see how they do. I'm really curious to see what the power consumption looks like when compared with my TP 4350's for the same flight profile. My previous tests with the 45C packs and Chinese packs were failures. I hope this works out a bit better.