ORIGINAL: airtime82
How much time should a person be getting out of an 1100 mah 4.8 4 cell pack? I get about 4(maybe a little more) out of my 600 and was going to buy some 1100 nicds, but dont want to if you cant get much more out of them.</p>
There is no set amount of time.
The time you get depends upon how much current you are drawing from the battery pack.
Unfortunately many RC'rs grossly underestimate what their electronics will draw.
A single standard servo is capable of drawing up to 2A ( 2000mA ) from your 1100mAh pack at full stall.
That means if a single servo bottoms out or has restricted movement, it can cause your available voltage to drop to the point that the other servos may stop functioning temporarily and/or your receiver may stop working!
Fortunately such high individual servo draw is rare on a properly configured plane, but you should really allow for as much as 200-400mA to be drawn by a single standard servo under in-flight loads.
So assuming five servos... 200mAh x 5 = 1000mA... in other words a 1100mAh pack MAY be just able to keep up with this for short durations ( what we typically see... ) on a non-agressively flown plane.
On any plane larger than .50 I don't use anything less than 1600mAh sized packs, and typically I'll go with 2000mAh up to .90's and 3600mAh packs beyond that.
I've measured current draw on a typical .46 size plane to be about 200-280mA with NO stick movement or servo center hunting...
That means the plane could possible sit completely still, but powered up, for three hours using a 1100mAh pack... Once you are in the air, things change.
On my gassers, I'll field charge the packs after every 4th flight or so if I'm using 2000mAh packs just to be safe.