Originally Posted by
secret_squirrel
Yes agreed for NiMh/NiCd. Here is something I found on the web for A123. Cut these numbers in half for safety and 60-70 flights is just a ridiculous waste of money to me. Like I said though, planes are like the stock market. You have to do what allows you to sleep peacefully at night/have a good day at the field.
In 2006, two A123 cells were put on a 100 percent depth-of-discharge (DOD) test at 23 degrees Celsius at a 1C/1C charge/discharge rate.
The results? After more than 20,000 full DOD cycles, the cells still have about 65 percent of their initial capacity remaining. To put this in perspective, if a battery is fully changed and discharged once per day, 20,000 cycles is equivalent to approximately 55 years!
Two things do in batteries, cycles and time. The reason for getting rid of batteries reguardless of the cycle count is time. Batteries start to break down over time, and will have a catastrophic failure at some point. This point gets much more likely after 2-3 years of use. The A123 cells may last much longer but unlike NiCads we don't have much data. The other thing is alot of people are runing LiFe batteries and calling them A123's which they are not. Those batteries such as Hobbico LiFe are not nearly as robust.