I have been flying small electric for about 6 years Iam moving up to 40 and 46 size gas planes and I would like to know can I use my 2&3 cell lipoly batterys for receiver batterys if I can what is the best size 2 or 3 cell . My 46 size plane is a Twist and I do fly 3d "with foam" Thank you for any help !!!

Your recvier is designed to operate on 4.8-6.0 volts nominal.

Dr.1

IS THAT A YES OR NO ??

its both......



if you just plug in a 2 or 3 cell lipo...you risk burning something out.....
you could do it, but it would require the use of a regulator... Fromeco makes nice ones...there are others that work too....

just get a 4 or 5 cell pack from the hobby shop and be done with it

It will be a YES if you get a voltage regulator to put inline between the battery and the receiver. These are small units, the size of a 15A ESC or less, and add about the same amount of weight.
If you don't regulate the voltage, the answer will be NO, because you will let the "magic blue smoke" out of your receiver within a minute of plugging the battery in.

Your choice.

I just bought a bunch of Ace Hobby 4.8V 700Mah NiCd receiver packs with Futaba connectors on them for $9.12 each from http://www.infinitehobbies.com. Why waste one of your LiPo packs for receiver duty when you can get such high quality receiver packs for so cheap?

In glow planes, having a receiver battery with a little bit of weight to it is actually advantageous. You can adjust the CG simply by moving the receiver battery around the radio compartment insteading of adding lead to the nose or tail. The extra weight of the NiCd battery is negligible on a 4.5 to 5.5lb airplane.

The part number for the Ace Hobby batteries are:

ACE2906J - Flat pack with Futaba/Tower Hobbies connector
ACE2906A - Flat pack with Ace/Airtronics connector
ACE2906S - Flat pack with JR connector
ACE2907J - Square pack with Futaba/Tower Hobbies connector
ACE2907A - Square pack with Ace/Airtronics connector
ACE2907S - Square pack with JR connector
ACE2907SI - Square pack with ??? connector (Only $6.08, maybe no connector)

At prices like these, there is no reason to use a LiPo battery for receiver power.

I'd get a 4.8 or 6.0 volt receiver pack.
Servo City currently has some decent deals
http://www.servocity.com/html/battery_blowout.html
Hitec 4.8v, 600mah nicad $4.99
Futaba 4.8v, 600mah nicad $5.99

Wow! Those are some smokin' good deals on receiver batteries. Is the servo city website finally back up? I heard they had a fiber cut and I haven't been able to get on their site.

It was up when I posted yesterday. They did have a super deal on the Futaba 1000mah packs that ship with heli radios but they sold out. My brother bought several of them.

Site is up now. Good prices. Are capacity numbers right? A 50 mah x 4.8v pack? What would that be used for?

50 mah pack is used for HL gliders and 010 models. At least thats what I use mine for.

Warning on the use of LIPOs with regulators. Nothing wrong with the LIPOs BUT two of my clubmates have had crashes that we can trace to inexpensive regulators. It appears the REGULATORS WERE SLOW TO REACT TO LOAD VARIATIONS AND THIS LED TO A FAILSAFE and crashs.

RX packs are so cheap now I would just buy a 4 cell nimh or nicad.

I am in the same situation as you. I started in electric and still fly some larger electrics. I have my first glow plane and use my 2cell 1100 lipo as a receiver battery pack. I use a switching UBEC from UnitedHobbies to go inline between the battery and receiver. http://www.unitedhobbies.com/UNITEDH...idProduct=4319
You can run at 5v or 6v by changing a jumper. I have run five standard servos for seven flights and pulled the battery. The battery was still at 7.9v.

The downside is that you need to remove the battery at the end of the day and charge it up outside the plane.

OI812, after reading through post #12, I suggest you concentrate on 1000 - 1800 mah Nicad / NiMH batteries. The biggies may weigh a couple ounces more but what the _ell? Some worry about a couple oz. servo/batt weight then add 5-15 oz. nose wt. Beats me.
I love the idea of never having to worry about a battery if I charge on Thurs/Fri and go fly all day Sat/Sun. or such. I am replacing those 600 mah tmtr. batts with 1500 NiMH and using 1000 -2000 mah in all planes of .25 and above. Never a worry about those night before or field charges.

If you go NiMH, be conservative with the charge rates. One club member recently destroyed a fancy transmitter with a FAST charge of 1500 mah NiMH. He said, "I have always done it!" Well, that transmitter definitely showed he "done it" that time!
A few weeks ago another CM that pushes the envelope was field charging a 2x00+/- mah Hydromax NiMH pack at 1000 mah. Bang, Bang, Bang, I suppose those 3 cells "Balanced" themselves. Blew the side out of a pretty Big Bird.

I'm not into electrics, but my club has 2 pattern pilots that went electric. I saw those $800 LiPos lose the magic smoke a couple times. One even found smoke and flames in the plane to let go after a rough landing. [sm=sad_smile.gif] I will stick with gas and glow. I notice one of those guys is back running glow.

Don't saddle your sport fliers with those 600 mah kiddie packs.

edit: typos