paradise

I have one of those yellow foamie sky-flys made by Hobbico. Great to mess around with....all for $99! My problem is that the batteries and/or the motor are wearing down a bit and it just ain't got the oomph it used to have. It uses a 380 with a NiMH 7 cell 8.2V / 900 mAh battery. My friend says to me: "You want to try a Lipo battery?"......It turned out to be an 11.1V, 1320 mAh Lipo....About 3X stronger than the battery that was in it. Despite the possible harm to electronics, we all looked at one another and said: "what the heck, lets try it!". What a sight to behold! I think someone made the comment "Its like a park flyer with double nitrous & a blower"....You would have had to see it to believe it. Had a most dramatic landing too. The crowd got their moneys worth. As an additional benefit, I took some weight off and it had a nice glide ratio....it was no longer a flying brick that drops out of the air when you kill power.

At any rate, I think I am on to something. 1) What made the plane so much faster? Was it the increased voltage or the increased current or the higher 'C' rating of the battery? 2) I have found a 480 motor that is physically the same size and that supposedly uses the same battery. Anybody have any idea what voltage/current range this motor is good for? 3) What other compromises in ESC life, etc am I likely to see? I know if I switch over from NiMH to Lipo my low voltage cutoff will no longer work and I can accidentally drian my lipo down too far and ruin it. The flight time with a lipo si so long I think I'll get bored before I run it down too much.