ORIGINAL: Kavik Kang
I've seen this said a few times, and I am confused by it. I must be missing something. If you have an electric plane and a battery, and you fly until it is empty...
then you have to charge the battery. This takes several hours, right?
No it takes 1 hour.
ORIGINAL: Kavik Kang
Electric you make one flight and wait a few hours for the battery to re-charge...
What am I missing?
Do people who use electric planes have 5 batteries for their plane, or something?
Ah, here's something that seperates the "toys" from the good EP's
With a decent field charger you can recharge LiPo battery packs in about an hour. Less is actually possible, but let's say you stick with a charge rate that will maximize your pack's longevity.
So with a Lipo plane, you bring out your field charger, and a couple of packs ( or more if you wish ).
You fly for ~15 minutes ( I fly as long as 30+ minutes with my SuperSportster EP on ONE pack. ).
Then you swap the packs and charge the now discharged one, while you fly with another.
Typically you're shooting the breeze, etc. for 10+ minutes between flights... so even two packs can possibly keep you flying all day long. With three packs you definitely do.
So then the issue of the price of packs for EP's comes up.
With a non "toy" EP plane you can use somewhat standard sized LiPo's, say 1800mAh, 2200mAh, etc.
These are transferable from one plane to another. In many cases you can gang them together opting for increased capacity or voltage.
I'll take two of the same 11v 2200mAh packs I use on one plane and combine them into a 22v 2200mAh pack to use on a pusher prop Bobcat EP .25. So I get to use the same "fuel" amoung several electric planes.
You can also use two 11v 2200mAh packs to work as one 11v 4400mAh pack giving you great flight times.
Once you start leveraging your battery investment this way it's easier and/or cheaper to deal with multiple electrics than it is with say a single electric model. The latter costs more on a per unit basis... much like your field box being useful for multiple planes.
This makes say the Electricstar somewhat attractive as a trainer if you are going to stay with electrics.... as you can purchase a set of LiPo's and then continue to use them on other planes.
I've nothing against glow or electric. I fly and enjoy both. IMHO each has their place.
There are some days that I drag out nothing but electrics to the field, and other days nothing but glows and gassers.
Sometimes both go out at the same time.