You seem to be taking this personally, and retrenching your position. That's unfortunate for everyone. The reason I referred to Central Hobbies' article is simple--they give real-world current-draw numbers that illustrate the difference in current draw between just running the engine and not running the engine. It's illustrative of the differences between sitting there moving the sticks around until the battery is out of juice and real-world applications. It's great to cite a magazine article, but it's useless to prove a point when you're not providing any real data from it. I don't know the author from Adam, and who's to say he actually knows what he's talking about? In this instance you're off the mark. Big whoop. It happens.

This is the second time you've made the analogy to running a model out of fuel, and it's just not that apt. Nobody should ever get close to "empty" on a battery. The little methods you came up with are simply bad ideas. Why give out such advice, when you yourself say it isn't what should be done in practice?

I'm not at all sure why you quoted me out of context, either. This isn't a contest. If your pride is hurt because I pointed out that you gave bad advice that could result in crashes and injuries, perhaps you shouldn't be giving out such advice. Nobody is perfect, and nobody knows everything. Our flight packs draw variable amounts of current depending on what the servos are doing. When they work harder, they draw more current. You advised people that by measuring run times in very lightly loaded conditions they could calculate their available flight time, and that is simply bad advice. Rather than admit that, you're attempting to condition it. Why not just back off the bad advice?