Everyone knows the normal dangers associated with Lipo's. Its a subject thats been discussed many times.


I want to share with you something which hasnt been discussed in detail.


The other day I was flying one of my favorite foamy's outdoors. It was powered by a 3 cell 1250mah lipo velcro'd to the fuselage.
Apparently I had been pulling to many G's as the lipo suddenly exited the plane after a snap roll. At first I thought it was a piece of depron. NOPE.
When the lipo hit the ground from 100 ft up, it promptly burst into flames in a fireball.
Ignoring my still airborne and now uncontrollable foamy (no battery means no control) I quickly ran over and started kicking dirt on the flames to put them out.

I was extremely glad that the lipo landed in the dirt and brush field, and not in my neighbors yard, roof, or in any other flammable area.


So I just offer this as a hopeful warning, that lipos should be FIRMLY attached to your airplane, and if your really pulling high G maneuvers, use a little extra velcro, or some other attachment to prevent the lipo from coming loose. This will help prevent a potential situation where you start a fire, and also prevent loss of your plane and your expensive lipo.
Imagine the havoc it would have cause if that lipo had fireballed on one of my neighbors roofs or in their backyard. Better safe than sorry.

I am building another plane to replace it, but I will be adding additional measures to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Be Safe.

Bryan out.

Good point Brian. How far did your foamy float away ?

It didnt make it very far. It went into a flat spin without the lipo in it...I thought maybe it would make it all the way down in a flat spin and save it, but at about 25ft, it finally nosed over, and went in nose first. Compactor...accordian style.

Stripped one of my good futaba servos too. Bummer. That 15 cent piece of velcro cost me about 80 bucks.

Ah...its just depron. Besides it gives me a chance to build another one, with a new paint job. Ill be posting pics of the new one soon. Gotta finish painting it first.

And it should be mentioned that this was NOT any of the cartoon planes. It was just a Revolution II painted with spiderwebs. Ill post pics of the carnage if you like.

I would like to see it mostly to see the spider webs well and the carnage lol. Sory to hear about your battery that tryed to fly on its own.

Carnage coming right up. Ill shoot pics of it tonight, and post them.

It crushed the nose, and snapped the tail clean off. Everybody loves a little carnage. It could be rebuilt I think. Its just easier to build a new one though.

I will post a picture of what I did to my F3A last Saturday I was doing a one roll rolling circle around the gym and clipped the tip of the wing on a post. Breaking the fues off right behind the wing. It looked much worse than it was the nose on my shockys almost never break because of the carbon rod bracing that I do. ( they never did up until the other day) My dad managed to break his well it didn’t break the nose too too much... One of the carbon rods slipped through the motor mount and then it crushed the wing back where the rods attach to the landing gear and leading edge... This thing hit hard though I mean really hard he kept flying it with half of the elevator gone and the nose only being held on with the carbon rods the foam was broken free.... (indoor mid airs nearly claim another)

I have also slung a lipo. Luckly I was low and no damage was done to the battery or the plane. Like bdavison says velcro is your freind

You guys should see me do a Wall with my little ST Models YAK ... the plane stopped but the battery did not understand that fact! I was most fortunate there was not damage.

I didnt get home till really late last night due to us flying indoor. Ill post pics as soon as I get home.

the entire back of my battery's are all velcro, and I have more than that amount of velcro on the plane it self. Saw the video of Jason Krauss sling a lipo off and made sure i put all the velcro on it i could. I'll try to find the video if i can.

Did the same thing doing tight snaprolls with a shocky. I made a strap from 1 in. wide tape stuch together sticky side to sticky side so you end up with a plastic strip about a foot long. Slit the wing twice about the width of the batt. Feed it through the wing and back up the other slit. put velcro on both ends afrer cutting it to length. Havn't lost a batt. since. Still have just as many prangs though.

hey bdavidson, i know you've seen this thread before. Very ironic. You were almost right on.

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_36...tm.htm#3637589

Yeah, no joke. I had a 1" wide piece of velcro all the way down the entire battery length, and it still came off.

I found some 2-sided Velcro strap at a craft store. (Just go past the Foo-Foo Chick Stuff department and take a left into the Cool Guy Stuff department.) It's not too expensive, like $4.99 for 10 feet or so. I embed a 4"-5" dowel or spruce strip lengthwise in the profile fuselage, grazing the top of the battery hole. Above the dowel, midway along its length, is a narrow slot for the Velcro strip. Then it's slide the battery in, close the Velcro loop, & let the lomcevaks begin.

Although I have to admit, the in-flight detachment looks pretty exciting on video.

I just got a e-mail from Bill Altman, he said he did a geological survey with his T-rex heli yesterday, and he quickly pulled the throttle off, and noticed smoke coming from the heli. He ran over and yanked the battery out and tossed it, and it blew up in mid-air in a fireball.

Good thing it didnt go up in a fireball while still in the heli. Ironic that this happened just a little while after my incident.

I would recommend the following for all you guys.

1. Be aware that in ANY kind of impact with a lipo, it is possible that the casing is ruptured, or that there is a electronic short inside the battery that can, and most likely WILL cause a explosion.

2. Use EXTREME caution around batteries that are puffed up, crushed, smoking, or otherwise damaged as it is very likely that the lipo will burst.

3. If flying where there are flammable materials, it would be highly recommended to have a fire extinguisher available at all times. Turbine pilots do this all the time, so should we.

4. Lipo ruptures can burn at 2000+ degrees, and the fumes are toxic. Use caution.

My PQ 1800 2S fell out at about 50 ft onto grass,,,,,,, had about 20 flights since, depends on impact

You have to make a very thoughtful judgment , on your incident

Made me laugh that T Rex , battery fireball , only its not funny