eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

I am using a 1800mah nimh in my eclipse 7 radio.

My Low Battery Warning goes off and battery has plenty of charge. I can charge the battery and it will take about 600mah then I can fly for about 4 flights and it starts with the beeping. It will still run properly but its very distracting.

Ever heard of this before?

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

What voltage is displayed when the alarm goes off?

I'm using a 2100mAH NiMH pack in my Eclipse (with Spectra) and after 2 hours it's still at least 10 volts.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

The voltage is somewhere around 9.9 when it starts.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

What I should have said is that the eclipse reads around 9.9 volts, but when I put the battery on my Triton charger it reads around 12 volts.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

I've never run my transmitter down far enough to get the low-battery alert but I would have expected that it would not kick in until at least 9.5-9.6V since the nominal voltage of a nicad cell is 1.2 (for 9.6V total).

It sounds as if your transmitter may be faulty.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

I would guess there's a problem with the tx as well, but having said that, the low voltage warning shouldn't be coming on at 9.5 volts either! On my radios, it comes on around 8.9 volts. If you quit when your voltage shows 9.6 you are only using about half the capacity of your batteries. The transmitter will put out full power until the low voltage protection shuts it off!

HTH
Jim

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

I was only guessing at the low-voltage alarm level -- with the NiMH battery in my Eclipse it's still showing over 10V after a full day's flying, even though I might have topped up the flight pack (600mAH) several times with my field-charger.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

Is it even slightly possible that the battery has a problem? I would hate to send my radio back and have it be that simple.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

It definitly sounds like the low voltage alarm is faulty. On my old eclpise it started beeping at around 9.3v. If yours is starting to beep at 9.9v, then it must be the problem. It might pay to cycle your pack on your triton just to check the capacity.

Stefan

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

The low voltage circuitry is associated with the batteries current voltage under load, capacity is not a factor.

It is possible the battery is at fault, cycling the battery and observing its capacity and more importantly its average voltage under load would provide the answer on its air worthiness.

Additionally I would cycle the battery several times prior to deciding on its abilty to function as designed and I would use the wall charger over night after a peak charge on the Triton to balance the cells.

Its always possible ther is a problem with the TX, if in doubt send it for service with the battery.

RE: eclipse 7 and nimh battery
 

I cycled the battery 3 times and it only pulled out 1200mah on the first discharge and only put in 1000mah and then continued around 1000mah each time. I am going to assume that it was the battery.

thanks for all the help