<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; ">My brother is always concerned about his Trojan'sbatteryrunning out while he is flying. He is going to get a new airplane. I think that electric is the way to go, but he wants glow. This is because his worried about the battery running out.

Question:

Is there a way to see if the battery is low?
What's the best way to keep the battery from running while flying?<br type="_moz" />

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For Electric or glow use a timer.... I keep the time in my head . Tell him he'll have to worry about the fuel running out now. Fuel is fuel whether it's electrons or liquid. I fly glow and can usually get down to a couple mins of fuel left judging by whats left when I empty the tank.

I beleive the lipos have a fairly contstant discharge curve until the end so you won't really know your low until close to the end. The programmable ESC's usually covers those conditions though by overriding throttle and reducing power to the motor giving you a heads up it's time to land

the following is if you decide to go glow

you could buy a http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...e%3C%2Fb%3Eter i never go to the flying field with out it....regardless if i charged my batteries the night before....it puts a nice load that simulates the servos under working conditions


and once you have an idea that the battery ack you have is reliable you can use one of these as a spot check, but not to replace getting a voltmeter http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXHDJ2&P=ML

You really don't need to worry about the battery running low. There will be a noticible decrease in power long before the batteries run low enough to lose control.

When you can tell that the plane is flying slower, it's time to land - but you still have plenty of time to land.

MinnFlyer is correct.
In addition, when mine gets low on juice I can hear a pulsing sound
from the motor. There is still plenty of time to land.
I get from 8 to 12 minutes per flight/battery.
When I fly glow I usually land after about 10 minutes.
The flights are similar in time so not a lot of difference gained
from going to glow.
Good Luck,
KW_Counter

Well, that's fine for electric powered planes, but I think he is talking about how to know when the GLOW plane is running low on fuel, and I believe Kitbuild said it... simply by flying and checking the amount of fuel left after, say, 10 minutes of flying, landing, then de-fueling. Then you can judge how much fuel a typical 10 minute flight with GLOW will be and fly accordingly.

For the glow powered planes, the receiver battery can be monitored, as pointed out by MetalicJunkie, using the Voltwatch 2 that his link points to. But, it's always a good idea to keep a good quality "loaded" voltmeter on hand.. one that puts a load on the battery pack. The voltwatch 2 works as though it has a load because it is activated when you power up your glow receiver and the load it monitors is what the battery pack is currently "seeing". Simply wiggle the sticks and watch the LED's. If it goes flickers to the red, either you have a bind in the linkage or it's time to recharge.

CGr.

Thanks a bunch all.

One thing about glow is tank size and engine size. I have a revolver and when I had a .45 engine on it I could seriously get about 20 min of flight out of it, I would actually get tired of flying it before it ran out of fuel and when I did land I still have about 1/4 of a tank left. It is hard to compare glow and electric. You can get a higher mah battery and get longer flight time 15-20 min with electrics. I fly gas because I like the sound, but if you are the type of person that likes a nice clean plane and you have to fly where there is a noise issue then go electric.