How do we get hold of these "New Generation" batterys?
Flight Energy will have them in the next week or so.
They are about the price of an equivalent amount of mah of NiCd or NiMh batteries. ie: One 7800 mah lipoly pack is equivalent to three 10 cell packs of 2600 mah NiMh packs. Those 10x2600 NiMh packs got for somewhere around $70 apiece.....
Many folks mistakenly count the price of batteries as part of the price of an electric airplane. Batteries are actually
FUEL, and you purchase fuel "in advance" for electric airplanes. While the price of electric "fuel" cannot at present compete with the price of gasoline, it is not all that prohibitive when compared to the price of glow fuel for large glow engines, if you do the math. (even at the current "new technology" price of lipoly batteries, which will undoubtedly come down in price) I have a Saito 180 and it drinks $15 per gallon glow fuel like it's going out of style. I get about 6.5 flights of 7-8 minutes out of a gallon of glow fuel. At $15 a gallon, that's about 31 cents a minute. If I purchase a $200 battery pack which allows me to fly for 25 minutes, and I only get 200 cycles out of that battery pack, that's
4 cents a minute. The numbers and your milage will of course vary, but stick some numbers in a spreadsheet and play with them if you want to get an idea of the true picture.
And then of course there's the long list of hassle free e-flight advantages which I won't get into