olstoney

My Feedback: (19)

Hello Everyone,
I bought one of these power panels and it really is pretty cool. I do have a question though as the directions are not really clear on this point. When I switch the power panel on all four of the input power LED'S light up. The directions state that this is apparently supposed be correct if I'm understanding this correctly. The confusion starts with adequate field charge exists when the green LED'S are illuminated. If only the red LED is illuminated this indicates that the battery voltage is very low and requires recharging.

The reason that I am asking the question is my electric fuel pump worked perfectly, but my electric starter would only buzz and would not turn over like it was not getting enough power. I plugged my starter into a friends power panel and it worked perfectly. I duplicated this twice replugging the starter into the Accu-Glow with the same results. I'm getting 12V at the starter ports, but can't tell what the amperage is. Does anyone have any ideas before I ship this back and are all of the LED'S supposed to be on if the field battery is fully charged?

ecmiller

I have one of these panels, and they are pretty cool. All LED's light up to indicate a full charge. Less than four LED's with no load indicates the state of the battery and indicates a charge is needed. When the battery is under load such as when you are using the starter or fuel pump you will see a few of the green LED's dim or go out. They will come back on when you finish using the pump or starter. This is normal.

Your starter should kick right over. Your test indicates that nothing is wrong with it. As for the panel, send it back as something is not right.

[:@]

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

Have you tried to plug your electric starter directly to the battery? That will probally help elimate or tell you that your powerpannel is not working correctly.
What field battery are you using? For what i know and tested that the hobbico torqmaster had a spike of about 15 amps and lowered to a constant 10 or so amps with no load. When putting a load to it (starting my saito 100) the amps increased and then the starter would just run out of umph to turn over the motor. That kind of discharge was really hi for a small 4 ah battery i had, then put a motorcycle battery and all the problems went away. I personally dont own that pannel so i cant really help your with your paticualar problem.

olstoney

My Feedback: (19)

Thanks for the responses guys,
My field battery is a Hobbico 7AH, the starter is a Hobbico Torquemaster 180 that spins my Saito 100 and YS 110 easily. The starter does run off the battery directly as it did on my friends field box battery yesterday. Although I'm getting 12V at the starter ports it would appear that for some reason not enough amperage is available. I guess that I'll have to send this back to Hobby Services to be checked out. Until then I don't know, guess I'll have to borrow from guys at the field[sm=thumbup.gif]. No way will I try to hand start my Saito and YS four strokes with those APC Ginsu blades on them. I'll have a new Edge built with a YS 140FZ in a couple of weeks. Sure hope that this starter will turn that bad boy over.

carrellh

A fully charged 12 volt battery will read between 13 & 14 volts under no load.
When the battery gets down to 12 volts it is almost dead.
It's sort of like a typical 4.8 volt receiver battery; just 10 cells versus 4.
Many people will not fly at all if the receiver battery reads less than 4.8 volts

Efishensea

My Feedback: (15)

Just Picked up a Hobbico Accu-Glo MK II Power Panel. It seems to be working, But is it normal for the Red LED Light for the Plug Continuity section to be on when the Panel is powered up and no leads are in??????????. My Red LED light is on all the time except when I plug in a glow plug....then it will go Green. I Need to Know so I can take it back or install it.


Help.


Paul.

ecmiller

That is normal. Red indicates no continuity, and with no plug attached, you have just that...no continuity. What you don't want to see is red with a glow plug attached.

Install your panel, it's fine.

ecmiller

OOPS that should have gone in the next post down.

olstoney

My Feedback: (19)

It would seem to me that if the red LED is on that your field battery needs to be charged. I do not know about the glow plug function as I use a Nicad Glow Starter. Are all of the LED'S on when you power up the panel? From what the other guys have told me this is supposed to be so. If you only get a red LED when powering up, the directions indicate that the field battery needs to be recharged hope this helps.

rcfury

My Feedback: (5)

Actually what im reading is you do have a bad battery. Almost exactly the same thing happened to me at the field. That morning i took the battery off the charger (wall wart), the voltage looked good so i took it and headed to the field. Fuel pump worked and the starter just didnt' turn. The battery was dead. What i found out doing a little research, i let the battery discharge a little to much when i couldn't fly for like a couple of months due to work etc. The voltage must have gotten to low and had negitve effects on the plates in the battery. Voltage was there but no amps...
Now my .02 cents is to go to the local pepboys and pick up the BAtterytender JR. Its a peak charger for the field batterys. You can leave it plugged in for how long you want as it contantly measures the voltage. If the battery drops a little it charges it up till the voltage is where its supposed to be. IE Constant Voltage Charging.

jpooch00

I just got one of these panels and when I hooked it up the 4 LED's by the switch lit up and also both of the GREEN LED's on the glow plug panel - even though there is nothing plugged into it. I turned the heat indicator adjustment screw and the red (hot/cold) LED came on and the green one came back on when I turned the adjustment back to the original position, but the green (good) continuity LED continued to stay on the whole time. I connecteda glow clip to the panel jacks and hooked it to anew glow plug and it lit up the plug OK, but the green LED continued to stay on after I disconnected the plug and unplugged the clip from the panel jacks.

I called Hobbico and the guy didn't seem to really grasp what I was saying at first, but he got one of the panels and hooked it up to a battery and he said that his did the same thing with no glow plug hooked up.

It's hard for me to believe that the "continuity good"LED should come on with no glow plug hooked up.

Am I missing something???

Thanks in advance for any and all info.

John