rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

As my planes grew my battery requirements had to grow also. My Duratrax Ice wasn’t going to cut it anymore with my larger lipos and Ni-XX batteries. I needed a new charger that will be able to fill every one of my needs and still have some room to grow. After months of research of what is on the market for a charger that will accommodate my needs, and many recommendations what charger will be perfect. I still wasn’t impressed. There were some chargers that would charge any lipo in the world but then was lacking in other areas. I wanted to charger that could be able to charge or balance charge up to 8 cells and still be able to charge everything else, so I won’t have to carry multiple chargers. Then I was introduced to www.rcaccessory.com with their bantam chargers. Bantam being a relatively new company in the RC hobby but, has been getting rave reviews.
I then purchased the Batam BC-8 charger as this charger will do anything you could think of. Here is some of the specs of this charger.

- 27 cells Nicad / Nimh
- built in 8 cell lipo charger / balancer
- support for Lipo – Li-ion – LI-FE (A123 cells)
- 10 battery memory
- Back-light LCD screen




When I received the charger I was in bliss. I was like a kid in a candy store. The charger has a robust aluminum case which should take some abuse. As I tend be kind of hard on things. However, I thought the buttons feel kinda of flimsy but, work very well. As you open the box you get a number of things.
You get the software and usb adapter for monitoring voltages on a computer with an extra balancing lead. I had to purchace the balance adapter for thunder power separately but this will allow me to charge any Thunder Power style battery I can throw at it.

Next to charge some batteries and test this baby out. I first just charged a basic 7.4 volt Nimh battery to warm things up.



It didn’t take me very long to start plugging in information to charge the battery. The menu system is very well thought out. You can manually adjust the charge rate or you also have the automatic setting. I don’t like doing anything automatically so I know what’s going on. All is needed is to press the Batt type button till NiMH is shown then press enter. Then each item that is adjustable blinks depending on what you want to change. By using the adjustment buttons you can increase / decrease the setting, and pressing enter, locks it. You will do that for the voltage, capacity, and the delta peak.
The charger is very easy to operate, and plus if you are still lost then the manual gives you screen shots and the buttons you need to press.

During charging, you will see the battery type, amperage, Voltage, charging time, and the capacity of the battery. You can also press the inc / dec buttons to see other settings like delta peak and input voltage without disrupting the charge process.

The next thing I was curious is the lipo charging. After setting the charge values of the battery and ready to start the charging process, the charger beeps then wants you to confirm the battery type. To what the charger see’s and what you entered. So you can make sure you are charging the correct battery.



During charging you get the same display as with the Nimh battery but, if you are balancing the battery you get a cool surprise when you press the Dec / Inc button. You get to see the individual cell voltages of the battery, as shown in the next picture. A very nice feature indeed. So if a cell suddenly goes south, you could easily figure out which cell it was that caused the error.





Of course the feature of this charger that I was interested in is the graphing / monitoring software that comes with the charger. When attemping to install the software I received an error stating to insert a disk in the slot. Um, there is a CD in the tray?!? Come to relized that the disk was blank. What the? With a quick call to RCaccessory he hooked me up to a link to download the software. Now with the software and drivers installed its time to plug my laptop in.

As you can see from graph it displays the battery status. From voltage, MAH, and current, you can toggle which items you want to display on the graph. It also allows you to save the charge to a picture file or in the their format to view with the software. I forgot to get a screen shot of the charge process, however I did save the file as a picture.




Overall im very happy with the charger and im sure this will give me years of good service. The screen is very easy to read, and the menu is even easier to understand. I do recommend this to anybody needing one charger to do anything. However, it is kind of pricey but, you get what you pay for. And im sure I got my moneys worth, with everything this charger does.

FilPilot

Nice Stuff!!!!

I LIKE THAT WE ALL NEED ONE OF THESE

Red Scholefield

My Feedback: (9)

And then there is the new Bantam BC-6 with its own built in power supply that lets you use it in the shop from AC or in the field from 12 V DC. Same features as the BC-8, the only limitation is that will handle just 6 LiPo cells as well as A123 cells. (probably all that the average electric flier needs) Check it out, I'm about finished testing for review that will appear in July Model Aviation Magazine (Battery Clinic column)

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

I was thinking about the BC-6 charger but, I needed the extra cell support of the 8. Using many power supplies from old PCs finding 12 volts is not hard to find with me. Sometimes it is nice having a AC/DC capability.

TampaRCGuy

My Feedback: (282)

In the new issue of the AMA magazine, Model Aviation, the BC-8 was listed in the "Worth a Closer Look" section.

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

That is very cool... I must read that article. Do you remember what issue was it?

TampaRCGuy

My Feedback: (282)

April issue, just arrived yesterday.