are there chargers that charge batteries faster ? mine takes 1.5hr to 2 hr to charge my 11.1v 1300mah Li-po - what specs for chargers should i be looking at ?

what numbers on batteries determine amount of flight time you'll get ?? ex; 11.1v 1300mah Li-p0, is it the mah or volts ?


whats the best to take out to the field - car battery, extra batteries ???


thanks

artman - how fast your lipo charges depends on your charging rate, not just the charger. A rule of thumb is you charge the battery at 1C ... the rate is same at the capacity, i.e. 1,300 mAh battery is charged at 1.3A. Some batteries can charge up to 3C but the manufacturer warns against this as it will shorten the life of your battery. For me I noticed that if you were to charge your 1,300 mAh pack at 1.3A and the battery is almost depleted, it will take about 90 mins. I have heard of some that take up to 3 hrs to charge 3/4 of the capacity at 1C, there is something very wrong, might be the balancer or the charger.

What are you using? What rate are you charging at?

Their are chargers that will charge faster, but DO NOT CHARGE YOUR LIPO BATTERYS ABOVE FACTORY RECOMENDATIONS, unless you are trying to start a fire and ruin you lipo.
If you don't know the factory recomended charge rate like 1c or 2c ALWAYS CHARGE THEM AT 1C OR LESS. The number that determines flight time is not on the battery because when the battery was built, they had no idea what you were going to use the battery for. In other words flight times change with the same battery pack in different applications and circumstances.

The 11.1 is the voltage rating of the battery the 1300 mah or milliamp hours is how much the battery discharge over time..... well I got this explaination from another site they explain it better than me.>>\/ \/ \/

mAh
Milliamp Hours.

A unit for measuring electric power over time. mAh is commonly used to describe the total amount of energy a battery can store.

A higher mAh rating means the battery can power a device that consumes more power and/or for a longer amount of time. For example, a battery rated at 1500 mAh can power a device drawing 100 milliamps for 15 hours, or a device drawing 150 milliamps for 10 hours.


What do you mean take to the field? to charge from or just extra batterys IMO both I always take extra batterys and some way to charge them.

When looking at chargers simply look for one that will charge to about 5 amps and is lipo compatiable I dont think you will need 5 amp charge rate but its nice to have the extra capicity of the charger.

How much are you discharging your battery before you charge them. Depending on the charger you have you can check this buy looking to see how many mah the charger puts back in. quick example when I charge my 2100 lipo for my Trex the battery will take about 1550 to 1650 mah to come back to a full charge which is about 75-80% of battery capicity. That is a safe range for this battery any more and the battery would be junk, yes I know that oops one battery over discharge was enough for me.

Very good advise so far. NEVER fast-charge a LiPo

You're much better off buying a second pack so one can be charging while you're using the other.

You also want a charger that will balance the pack. An 11.1 volt LiPo actually contains 3 separate cells. Over time, the cells can become unbalanced, and do not charge uniformly. A balancing charger (Look at the FMA Cell Pro 4s charger) charges each cell individually. The final charge should be 4.2 volts/cell. A quality LiPo battery should have a separate charging adapter that allows individual cell charging.

Brad

charger i'm using is the EMAX, its output : 12.6v, 800 mah (+- 10%)

battery has on it 15c, 20c and 25c but the label was erased so dont know which of the three, i think it was 15c ?

15C is the max disharge rate and has nothing to do with how fast you can charge.
1C is generally the highest accepted rate so no matter what charger you use it will take at least 1 full hour PLUS.
Why do I say PLUS? most lipo chargers will charge to about 90% or so of the batteries capacity then it will slow down for the last 10% to prevent heating and possible fire.
I personally use the Bantam Estation charger on my lipos and it does balance charge.
http://www.bantam301.20m.com/BC-5.htm