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Old 07-26-2005 | 11:17 PM
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can773
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Default RE: What Battery Pack for e-pattern

ORIGINAL: mups53

It sure would be good if the people running Electric F3A setups would give us the time to tell us how they are doing it. Thanks, Mike
My setup is as follows,

Plettenberg Xtra 25-13 (currently testing props with the new 30-10 motor)
Schulze 32.55K ESC
Thunder Power 5s4p 5300 Prolites
Schulze ISL6-330D chargers (2 of them)
TP 5 cell balancers on every charge whether required or not (although testing shows the packs to hold balance brilliantly).
APC 19x12W e-prop (on the 25-13 motor)

The 25-13 setup spins the 19x12W prop at 6400 RPM and pulls around 65A static on the ground, getting around 2300-2400W. In the air the peak draw is down to around 60A. The packs are rated to do 70A continuous, with up to 109A burst so this is well within the packs during flight. This setup does not have the power of a Hacker setup but is more than enough to fly the FAI sequences.

I dont have enough time and testing with the new 30-10 motor to fully comment, but it is more powerful and once I get the prop size figured out should compete very closely with the Hackers for power.

I have around 200 flights on the 25-13 motor with the packs at around 40-50 cycles each, in all that time I have not had a single issue. I keep my discharges to 80% or less if possible although I have on one flight discharged to 93% by accident. I series charge the packs to shorten the charging time, and will be getting the new Thunder Power chargers to increase the charge current on 10s as the Schulze 330D will only do around 3A on 10s. To charge 2 10s packs at 5A requires roughly 600W power supply which are tough to find at reasonable prices (try ebay for IOTA supplies).

Anyways thats about it, no magic just all off the shelf parts :-) I think the key to doing this succesfully is managing the details, knowing your temperatures (I temp after every flight), knowing the time limit for flying and understanding that different altitudes will affect how long you can fly. The killers are heat, overdischarge, and overcharge (with Thunder Powers new chargers and balancer interaction this will be a thing of the past), keep those in check and you should have few if any problems.

I have not pumped a drop of fuel this year, I find that a good electric setup is much more reliable and very user friendly compared to glow. I hope to cycle out the packs this season so I have a good idea of what life can be expected from them.