Okay, I went through a bunch of gotchas when I upgraded to LiPos. It's never just the battery. Here's my experience:

(1) bought some lipos and needed a way to charge them
(2) bought a charger (another $100 or so, but it's a nice 4-port one). Turns out the charger doesn't just plug into a wall. It has alligator clips where you're supposed to hook it up to power.
(3) bought a AC/DC power supply to plug the charger into. Turns out the voltages are wrong so the charger just beeps errors at me
(4) returned the adapter. Guy at the LHS says, just buy a sealed battery and charger instead like this one http://h1070999.hobbyshopnow.com/pro...asp?prod=HAN19. This is a two-stage process: charge the sealed battery for 10hrs, then use that battery to charge the lipos. Turns out the battery+charger combo was cheaper than the AC/DC power supply anyway, and at the price of having to charge for 10 hours, I get 6-7 lipo recharges that I can do in the field
(5) Had to make sure that your lipo plugs match the motor plugs. I got LiPos that just had two wire leads and had to attach a JST connector to it.
(6) the charger's ports were banana clips that I had to adapt to JST as well.
(7) Then I found out that each of the cells in any particular LiPo could go out of sync voltage wise, and if they got way out of sync, you could over charge them and cause it to catch fire. Fun. so, I was introduced to the world of balancers.
(8) Bought a thunder power balancer

I know you can buy chargers with a built-in balancer, but I didn't know that at the time. It is possible to manually balance a battery if you have a voltmeter and some sort of load (like a motor) that you can use to drain individual cells. Ask me how if you want to know, but using a balancer is more convenient.

Need to knows:
* don't overcharge them. They will catch fire
* don't overdrain them. You will ruin the battery. Use something like HRPOLY-X alarm circuit to warn you when you should land.
* don't let them get too cold. In the field, keep them in your pocket.
* don't be far away when you're charging them.
* when charging, place them on something that's not flammable away from anything that's flammable. I put mine in a ceramic bowl in the middle of my tiled floor.
* if you crash, inspect the battery for damage. If it's damaged, don't just throw it away. Throw it into a bucket saturated with salt. Leave it there for a couple days.

That said, I've yet to have a lipo flame up on me (knock on wood).

I have heard all the horror stories about these too, but have never experienced anything like what I have heard. I am careful not to run them down too low as this will ruin them, although I have taken them to the point where the chopper will not rotate (lift off), and have had no trouble getting them to charge. I have a cheap E-Sky charger, for both two and three cell, and if anything gets warm, its this charger. I will say, there is absolutely no comparison to the power and weight savings li po's offer, it is phenomenal over NiCad. Check out eBay, Tower, Hobby Lobby, etc, these have come along way and what’s exciting, there is something that will replace these power houses!!

Mr. Ammo, did you ever discover cause of glitches, i read somewhere that the receiver is prone to extremely small fractures on the receiver underneath the crystal holder on the 4 in 1. Mine recently started glitching by sending all my servo's in a one way mode when all three are plugged in. If only one is plugged in, I arms perfectly fine. Has anybody come across this problem.

I took the antenna off the wrap around the landing skid method recommended and put it through a piece of Ny Rod strapped to the skid...this cleared up my glitch problem!

But now...I have a new issue that has just started, I no longer have any control on the tail direction, ie I can hold the tail over manually for a little bit then the thing will start rotating in the nose left direction, even after adjusting the pot meter clockwise...until it hits the stop...anyone with ideas on why this rotates and has little control over the boom anymore??? The motor/ prop are spinning fine and the main head is smooth???

I'd try a new tail motor.

Yes, LiPos are definitely worth the extra worry. One thing though: It is likely that draining them to the point the heli won't hover is over-draining the battery. My LiPo alarm goes off well before the helicopter won't hover anymore.

i would try a new tail motor if you are still running the stock motor. Also, there is a mount that you can get to either use two stock tail motors,(helps keep them from burning up), or a direct drive motor. I might not be a bad thing to check the pitch of your main blades aslo. If the pitch is excessivly high, the tail rotor won't be able to compensate for the tourque generated by the main rotor head.

were do you guys recomend i get REALLY cheap blades lol im looking to buy like 5 at a time

helidirect.com, lots of good parts and blades are cheap!!

I did a temp fix and took 2 of my blades that are similar and only the tip was broke so i trimmed them about an inch only thing im worried about is the steel weight rod flying out at me again

I would also try Heli-fever.com, the shipment is a little slower, but they sell blades fairly cheap, and they also sell a pair of foam blades for those who are not currently flying in 3d mode. Word of caution though, If you change to the foam blades, they do have pitch in them. I flew the foam blades while learning to fly because they were only 4 dollars a set and when they ripped in half I could tape them back together.

what i mean by warning about the blades having pitch, is that you may have to adjust the servo rods because the blades will already be producing lift because of their natural pitch. if the pitch is too high you may create a situatio in which you have too much torque for the tail rotor to keep up. I found that you can unplug the main motor and then turn your helicopter on. check and see where the main blades are sitting, this is your zero mark. Any throttle(collective) you input from this point on, will cause the pitch of your blades to increase. As long as the main motor is disconnected, you can test this out. Just remember, that this does not apply when the idle up switch is used, but these blades are not meant for 3d flight anyway(not really stiff enough to endure it).

sweet


ill check out that site too !



[edit]

lol were are the foam blades ?

sorry about the slow reply got a little busy. look in the upgrade section, the blades are the PE main blades. They should be $3.75 i think.

its ok i was patient anyhow


now i read the page and i have to like modify them is this hard ?

no, it isn't hard. all you will do is disconnedt the servo rods from the swashplate. Then turn them in or out depending on what you want the blades to do. You might not need to adjust them at all, just thought I might warn you. I would count how many turns you make for each control rod, and keep track of it. That way you can always set them back to where you were originally. If you ever have to replace a servo, you will need to now how to do this.

hmm i dont like the idea of disconnting stuff while flying :S

Two things I didn't see mentioned are that you need to make sure the lipos you buy can handle the amp draw applied to them. The blade draws roughly 8 amps, so keeping that in mind, you need a lipo that can handle 8 amps continuous and about 11 amps surge (this would be minimum). To keep the arithmetic simple, an 8c at 1000mah constant would give you 8 amps. My 1320's are 10c, therefore I can handle 13.2 amps. Drawing too many amps can cause a battery to heat up very quickly. Doing this too long will allow you to gather the smoldering pieces of your heli off the ground. That is if you're not standing too close at the time, in which case someone else will gather the pieces. I accidently used a 2c-650 lipo on my pico once, and I emphasize, once. I was lucky and the pack only swelled up to twice it's normal size. Very lucky.

Second note: never intentionally discharge the battery like most people do NiCads and Nimh's. Just put it on the charger and recharge from wherever it's at. Lipos have no inherent memory problems like other rechargeables of the past.

One final mention, Lipos are quite safe if handled properly. And well worth the effort. I highly recommend a quality charger (plan to spend $70-$100), most of the safeguards are built in. Now if they could just figure out how to program common sense.


While I'm here....Talon....You mentioned cutting down the blades. Decreasing your total rotor diameter will require a lot of head speed. More likely you'll not get off the ground. You could maybe lift off with a higher tooth pinion, but then you'd have to change back if you put on the normal size blades. I usually CA the ends and tape them back together to hold the covering in order to get just a few more flights out of my old ones. You should see the patch job on the ones I have on now. They'd make Frankenstein proud, but they fly great. Make sure you balance any pair you use to each other. I have never found a matched set yet. Again, common sense rules. Pitch'm if they scare you.

Well i finally totaled theese ones !


i was out back cause it wasnt windy at all today with my training kit skimming over the ground about an inch and uh ohhh fell off the deck totaly owned one of my training kit balls / skid holder thingys so both ends are super messed up now , hopefully tomarrow i will beable to get some blades ! if i do im gonna buy 2 more pairs im thinking of even getting the arobatic upgrade cause its only 5 $ more than a set of blades and it comes with the heat sinks and stuff and is it bad that i ran the battery down today ? lol the blades wouldnt even spin after wards i hope that wont break um

Tuff break, good luck tomorrow... Im still waitin for my TM for my BCP. Those things sure go out alot...

not sure if you were jokeing or if i missed something, but after you adjust the servo rods, you hook them back up to the swashplate.

lol yeah i was fooling i ordered some

I had posted a question as to what would cause the Blade CP to rotate around the main rotor and the boom control to be ineffective. I tested the voltage at the rear tail motor and it was correct so the 4 in 1 was ruled out. Bottom line, these little motors wear out. They do not necessarily stop spinning; just don’t spin at the required rpm to maintain boom control. The tail motor was replaced and the chopper flies great, once again!

yeah the motors really arnet able to take the strain. that is why i upgraded to the direct drive, but i hear the dual motor setup is better, plus you can still run the stock motor, on the direct drive mount you cant run stock either one is supposed to make tail rotor more reliable

can you share your sources for direct drive?? Our LHS does not stock all the bits and pieces for the GWS motor conversion and are not interested in doing so. Direct drive sounds better!

heli-direct usually has all the parts in stock. Sometimes heli-hobby. Get the part numbers from bladecprepair.com.

Chelilim- I've heard the dual tail is very heavy, it takes a lot of forward weight to counter it, so bear that in mind. I'm going on four months DD. Love it.