Do you put your Tx and Rx batterys on charge when you get home after flying, or, wait till the night before you go? I know on the bass boat, I put the chargers on when I got home.

Hello Gary ..

I normally recharge either on the way home after flying, or after getting home. Depends on the mood of the day. I do not have a battery pack in every plane. I use the same battery pack in all my planes.... take it out at end of the day and reinstall the next time, in what ever plane I decide to fly that day. So, in the shop, I have a 24 hour timer. Transmitters are plugged into the timer. I normally have spare Flight pack that i also take with me. I keep those two flight packs plugged into the timer. I have the timer set to charge every morning, 7 days a week, from 5:00 AM till 6:00 AM. that way, any time that i want to go flying, or someone calls and wants to go flying, I am ready. works for me.

Bruce

I do it the night before except for lithiums, then I keep them charged all the time.

night before/day before.

I do it the night before I go flying. I usually load up my truck with what I plan on taking to the field and then I charge them in the back of my truck. This way in the morning all I do is unplug the chargers and go. When I come home on saturday I just leave them in the truck and charge again for sunday.

Ken

I usually charge them up the night before. As I'm a newbie (not a newbie newbie anymore), I asked around about how long I can let them go. If I don't make it out the planned day I feel safe up to about three days or so wothout recharging again. If I get nervous I just chuck them on the charger at lunch time at work. Lots of open space around a plug-in is a great thing to have. Haven't had a problem or a wiggle or anything .

Bring along a volt meter. A good rule of thumb is to not fly if the voltage drops below 5V or so. Assuming you have a 4C Ni-Cad.
Different types of battery packs have different limits, but a volt meter will tell you if the pack should last another flight or needs charging.

I would be cautious about using a simple volt meter to test the capacity of either a flight pack or a TX pack.

You need to load test them. No probs on the TX - switch it on and Anything less than Green or 9.5 volts DO NOT FLY.

TO TEST THE FLIGHT PACK UNDER LOAD IS TRICKY IF YOU JUST WIGGLE THE STICKS TO MOVE THE SERVOS.

The readings will be all over the shop. Much better to buy a little battery tester for about 20$ these apply a load and give you Green Amber Red

Do not fly if in the red OR the bottom amber.

Exactly, I have a Digital Volt Meter and I customized the end tips so I can plug it in my Charge Jack in the plane... my radio has a built in Digital Volt Meter. I completely agree with ger87410, with a meter you can determine if you need a good charge.


Moving the controls while looking at your meter is only going to drain your voltage. Sometimes I use the " Light Bulb Battery Dump" to drain my battery ( You have to stand by and watch while you do this with the meter, you don't want to dump too much or you could ruin your battery pack!) so I can re-new a good charge.

The "Timer Method" is the best... we don't have to worry about charging over your peak.


Luftwaffe Oberst
Radio Aero Modelers Club
AMA District II
Pulaski, NY

I allways want my ni-cd and ni-mh to be allmost empty before I recharge again.
And since I"m paranoid I allways have to charge the night before

A SIMPLE voltmeter can give you false confidence. Without loading the battery you don't know if the battery is actually good.

Not trying to start any battles here, but if you stop flying at 5 volts on a 4 cell pack, you're only using about 20-30 percent of your battery capacity. Nominal voltage on a NiMH or NiCd is 1.2 volts per cell. If you do a discharge curve on your battery pack, you'll find that the voltage will drop quickly to around 5 volts, and then slowly drop to 4.8 volts. The rapid drop off won't occur until you get down around 4.6-4.7 volts (1.1-1.15 volts per cell). Failure to adequatly discharge NiCd batteries is what leads to crystalization, and the "memory" effect.

Consequently, I usually quit flying if battery voltage is less than 4.75 on a 4 cell pack (loaded volt meter).

Brad

[&:] Hey everyone has there own style in doing things... as long as it works it doesn't matter. Can some one question how and why someone does a method without starting a fist fight?


Let us all... tell our ways of doing things, and let the person with the question pick his or her individual method?




Luftwaffe Oberst
Radio Aero Modelers Club
AMA District II
Pulaski, NY

Not likely on RCU.

Add me to the list of the people who charge them the night before. If I wanted to be sure they were always ready to go, I would probably use a method such as is described here: http://www.rcbatteryclinic.com/timer.html

BKDave, I'm with you on taking it to 4.75V, I tell everyone to stop at 5v to be safe. Do as I say, not as I do.
Given both the voltage and the history of the battery, you can pretty much tell all the time if the battery is good or not. I've never come across any type of battery that I couldn't tell that it was good or not by the voltage.
FYI: I never check my voltage. I listen to the servos. Servos sound different when the battery is low. Not a good way to tell, but a way to tell none the less.

well i use a 6v NiMh 1200Mah pack (left over from my RC car days) so i top that up the morning before i go flying (i go flying in the evenings) and do the same with the Glow start.

and as for the TX, i leave it on overnight to flatten the battery, then plug it into the charger the morning BEFORE i go flying and leave it on until about 10 at night (my bedtime is late :P)

then when i go flying, the TX is charged, the RX is charged and my glowstart is charged

Thanks guys, I was just wandering. I knew they would get " memory " I was thinking about getting a cycle'r ( sp ), any coments on that ?

The concept of memory is largely due to older battery technology. My charger cycles, but I don't use it to deal with memory issues. Instead, I periodically cycle the battery packs to confirm that they're still holding near their stated capacity.

Hi LuftwaffeOberst ............

How are things in Pulaski, NY these days? I used to come up there 2-3 times a week fishing in the river..& The wife and I used to spend my 5 weeks vacation camping at Selkirk Shores camp ground, .... many years ago. We used to stop at the sub shop (Mr Sub) in the village across from the little park in the middle of town for subs. They had the best subs ever! . I can taste their hot ruben subs now .............. ummm goooooooood stuff!!!!!! Talkin about lots of years ago. We moved to Fl long time back, and have not been up tp the sub shop for a long time now. Maybe make it this summer when we come up nawth! The area around there is most beautiful. Where do you fly there? We used to live close to 'Watkins Glen, Ny. Well, enuff off topic drivel aye?!?!

Bruce

I usually only fly one day out of the weekend (Sunday) and I put everything on the night before/Rx batt's/glow driver/12v gel cell/ Tx batt. I like to cycle every other month or so.

works for me.

The night before for me for the planes. I have a 2500mah nimh on my tx so I starting charging that 2 nights before I go.

the only memory problem i have had is with one of my old nikkos when i didnt completely drain them

if you have a NiCd glow start: put a little light bulb in the end to drain the battery, then recharge it

for NiCd transmitter: leave it on overnight to flatten he battery

for NiCd RX battery: same as the TX, leave it on overnight

oh coarse, if you have NiMh batteries you can just top them up the night before you go

I usually wait until I get to the field and then quick charge my TX and RX packs from my car battery with my Hobbico Quick Field Charger Mk II. Ten to fifteen minutes of charge time at 1A is enough to fully charge my batteries while I'm unloading my flight box, sticking my stooge in the dirt, and saying hello to the rest of the guys.

If I'm doing a little maintenence to a plane before I take it flying, I will trickle charge it on the AC charger, but I usually don't bother bringing planes into the house unless I need to straighten some gear or fix something.

As for cycling your batteries, I like doing it at least once over the winter. I'm a three-seasons flyer here in Nebraska, so when I'm bored in February I'll run all of my TX and RX packs through a 5 cycle run on my MRC Super Brain 989 just to keep them tuned up and to check them out.

In theory, quick charging at the field like I do is supposed to shorten the life of your batteries. In practice, all of my NiCd packs are still cycling above rated capacity after three seasons of flying with them.

Big Ed... what's a "stooge" ?