RE: cost per flight hour vs. glow
I have gone to electric this year in a 2 meter ship. Cost per flight is hard to do as J Lachowski mentioned, But i Scott made good sense too.
It depends on how muc h you intend to fly, and how much you accually fly. More often we intend to fly 15-20 filghts per week, but it ends up being more like 10 flights over the weekend.
I wentr to electric because i can keep 2 sets of batteries ready to go and get a couple flights after work, before dark. I dont need to bring chargers and other gear t othe field, just plane, transmitter and 4 batteries.
You will need a good charging source for the packs of course, and not just any generator will do!, i found this out. We have 110V at our field so practice is not a problem.
I beleive in charging 10 cells with the Thunder Power charger and balancer. This way the cells are always balanced before flight, and after flights i hook up the balancer while the packs are cooling down..about 15 minutes or so. By the time i start to charge again, the packs are balanced, and of course during charging the packs stay as close to balanced as possinle, with final balancing done after charging is complete.
If you figure just battery cost to fuel conumption (30% heli with a YS 1.60 @ 9 flights per gallon) you are still looking at electric being nearly even money!..dont jump down my throat here, this is just a generalization, but as close as i can come based on $20.00/ gallon, and $550 per battery set getting about 250 cycles per set. 250/9 per gallon= 28@ $20.00 gallons is about $560.00! Cheaper, well of course ont over all, but in this 1 case it looks more attractive!
Very general info, but its why i went electric!!