What reciever battery should I use? I want a 6v instead of a 4.8 like a normally get, what mAh should I get? I'm getting into 3d and I need the power for the servos. This will be my first 6v batt and I wanted to see the difference in perfermance in the servos for myself.

no way to answer.....

is this a .40 size plane or a 40% giant scale?

very different requirements....

I am no great expert on 6 v batterys, but have been using them on and off for about 25 years.They do speed up servos, but you can buy faster servos also.

There seems to be a consern over using 6 volt batterys with different recievers and servos. But I started using them on the old futaba systems 25 years ago and never had a problem.

One thing people tend to over look is the cutoff point on the voltage level, and I for one did not understand it at first. On the 4.8 v system we tend to go down to about 5 volts and quit flying ,thats fine.

But on the 6 volt 5 cell batterys , if you go to 5 volts that less than 1 volt per cell and you past the cut off limit for the battery ( in other words you loss control , battery failure ).

I like the new metal hydrads "NI-MH", I can put a 2500 Ma in one of my sport planes and fly all day. One thing I do , is to use the same battery type in all my planes. That way I won't be charging in the wrong mode. We can shorten our battery life by charging them wrong. All my planes are NI-MH and thats how I charge them "KISS" prinaple. (KEEP IT SIMPLE- SIMPLE).

good luck, I am sure more will chime in and you will get a lot of good advice.

sticks

1500 Mah would be my lower limit for sport planes.

Giant scale is another story.

Good point, I fly .40 to .80 size planes on the batterys I mentioned. The mostly have 4 servos, and the servos make a difference. Some servos draw more or less curent.

One guy I know flys the big gaser's in 3D and I don't know what size he uses , but they are BIG.

sticks

There's very few servos that have issues at 6 volts and most that do are special use servos like helicopter tail rotor servos.

Most modern equipment wont have an issue with it.

So the question becomes, what size plane and how many servos?

Sorry about that. Its an OMP Edge V3 so its a .40 size. Its has 5 servos, all standard.

If you are using a 2.4Ghz system, regardless of manufacturer, I'd stick with 6 volt packs. Cheap insurance, for sure.

All of my planes, except one, are on 6 volt packs, two have a pair of 6 volt packs. All have Voltwatch, for reasons previously explained and debated.

My choice is easy. 6 volt packs of perhaps a minimum of 1100 mah capacity. The higher the better (within reason).

CGr.

I've got to agree with CGR on this one.

I like the NiMh high MAH batteries. I went out to the field today and the plane and TX has set in the turnk of my car for almost two weeks. Both have NiMy packs. The TX was at 10 V when I turned on an after three flights was still at 9.8V

The plane was full up on the volt watch and after three flights was still there. It's just hard to beat the life of the NiMh batteries, IF and it is a really big IF, you charge them right. My first use was a TX pack that I over charged and I almost lost my trainer because one cell went dead about 20 seconds into the filgt. Charge them right and they will do a great job.

The weights doesn 't increase all the much between like size cells. Just remember Ohm's Law though, More voltge on the same resistance results on more amprage drawn. A 2000MAH 4.8V pack will give you more flight time than a 2000MAH 6V pack will. IE more amps for the same hours with the 6V pack.

Don

As a general rule for me I make my own NiMh packs and use a 4 cell 2200ma for .40 and smaller planes. For the .40 to 1.0, I use a 5 cell 2200ma. For anything larger I use a 5 cell 3200ma packs. I have yet to encounter a problem for the lack of power in my flight packs. The problem with fliers not familiar with using larger packs is that you need a charger that can do the job. Most chargers that come with the radios charge a four cell at maybe 100 ma or less. I use a older adjustable output AstoFlight charger and usually charge 30 minutes at 500ma to 1.5 amp according to the need and how run down the batteries are, after that it slow charges from 50ma to 150ma charges over night.

I'm new to airplanes but I have been flying for a while with Electric and Nitro Helicopters.

I moved away from NiMh batteries because they are heavy and hard to keep charged. I now have Lipo batteries in all my helicopters. I even put a Lipo battery in my new plane (which I will maden this Thursday). For all my stuff I'm using a 3s 11.1v 1050mAh Lipo battery. It is very small and very light weight. I get about 4 flights and that brings the charge to about 70% usage. Thats on my helicopters with High Torque - High Speed servo's. So far I've been happy with the Castle Creations CC BEC 10A - which brings the 11.1 volts to 5.1 volts.

Lipo batteries have gotten really cheap - I buy my batteries from HobbyKing.com for $12 bucks a piece.

If you are really planning on doing 3D with this plane, then I would definitely not rely on one battery. I'd opt for a pair of batteries, which is exactly what I am using on my Venus II pattern plane. I have a pair of 1200 mah NiMh packs in that plane.

Believe me when I say that it saved my plane one day when I found one of the packs had gone bad during a flight. If that had been the only pack on that plane, well i would have had to pick up the pieces.

It is easy to do and the pair of 1100 mah packs are light enough that the gain of the redundency outweighs the added ounces for that second pack. You can either install the batteries each in their own channel slot on the RX or Y cable them to any channel on the RX. And, one voltwatch in stalled either on a vacant channel or Y cables to another channel. And, of course, one switch per battery pack.

That enables full redundency and might save the plane during one of those difficult to recover from 3D maneuvers... which, according to Murphy, will be the time when a pack will fail on you.

Just my thoughts on recommendations for your battery choices.

CGr.