Nick ~
Ok..... I thought that maybe you did, but couldn't exactly recall... I read way to much, and forget then a lot....
Yes, the Blinky gets hot ! Even in my cooler environment and even charging/balancing in the cooler garage I always keep a fan circulating air around it. And as you remember, I even removed the plastic covering from the Blinky to eliminate any unecessary heat build up. I'am so amazed to this day, that the Common-Sense Blinky I have is almost 2 years old... Its the only thing that has ever balanced all my lipo's since I've ventured with using lipo's. And I only have one... Yikes, I know.... I need a balancer sometime like Thunder-Power's balancer that will connect into my Thunder-Power 1010c charger without a doubt...!
Isn't it also amazing that the Thunder Power Prolite is also almost 2 years old in the picture below?? ! That's the same lipo that you've seen me run in all my Mini-Funtana flights... To this day, I've still never had a lipo puff or go bad yet. I even keep them fully charged, since I charge them back up upon completing a flight to keep the confusion down to a minimum on whether the batt is charged or not for the next flight.
Since I really don't fly all that much, and mostly just on the weekends, I've always just charged my lipo's at a nice easy slow pace. If the battery is like a 2100 or 2200 mah'er I set the charge rate to only about 1.40-1.50 amps... Or is that volts ?? ! Hek, I just had a brain fart ! LMAO... I gotta go eat dinner, I'am starving !
But yeah the only lipo's I've used that still remain functional and even pushing that 2 year mark are the E-Flite, Thunder-Power, Air-Thunder batts... And just recently for the T-500 started using now the Outrage packs. You do pay for what you get in this hobby without a doubt in my experiences. I still though want to try out these cheaper batts that some of you guys are using from like Hobby-City or whatever....
In fact my flight with one of my Aerobird Challenger's that I flew this past weekend was using one of my stock CPP E-Flite 800 mah 10c lipo's that is now OVER two years old... I should download the video to that flight.... That plane is so fun !