Fire
 

A couple weeks ago, my friend's garage caught fire.. thank god everybody was ok...don't know the reason, and he doesn't fly r/c planes at all. That made me think...All of us charge our field box, planes, and radios overnight....so i'm thinking is it safe at all? Could it just simply start a fire when you charging??? I've been in r/c for about 3yrs...so never had a problem...but makes me think twice again...after what happen to my friend's garage... makes me wonder....

RE: Fire
 

Was your friend charging a battery pack?

I have never heard of a fire starting from charging a battery pack when using the proper charger, I guess it's possible, but probably no more of a danger than any appliance in your house that is plugged in. I have had NiMh battery packs get warm during fast charge but not hot. I think you would be ok on overnight trickle charger. You might think twice before leaving one on fast charge for a long period of time.

I never store glow fuel near a possible source of ignition and I do store it in a vented area in case fumes escape.
Hope this helps.

WCB

RE: Fire
 

As a general rule, never fast charge any battery unattended. Slow or Trickle chargers are fine.

RE: Fire
 

You're all right..i never fast charge unattended...but i usually slow charge like 10 hours...

RE: Fire
 

Just so people don't get confused, we generally use three charge rates. Fast charging (usually 1 to 3 C or 1 to 3 times the pack capacity), C/10 (one tenth the capacity of the pack, like the chargers that come with radios. Usually 50 to 60 mAh.), and "TRICKLE" charge (C/100, or usually 5 to 6 mAH).

Too many people are calling the overnight chargers "trickle" chargers. They're not, and we're going to start confusing new guys. Like all the advice telling beginners that it's fine to leave they're packs on "trickle" charge continuously. Which it is, but if they think C/10 is trickle, they can ruin their packs.
Dennis-

RE: Fire
 

Thanks Dennis. I know very little about electronics and have been flying R/C for a long time and never knew that an overnight charger was not a trickle charger. Learn something new every day.

What I don't understand is why manufacturers don't build an auto-shutoff into their chargers. OK, I know they don't to save money, but seriously, how much more would it cost to build in peak detection?

What really kills me is that Futaba sets up their transmitters so a peak charger can't be used and some transmitters don't even allow you to remove the batteries. A guy brought over his 6-channel heli radio and I couldn't charge his batteries with any of the chargers I use.

On my transmitters I bypassed the diode, but I'm not cutting into a customer's transmitter. Fortunately, I managed to dig out an old futaba charger from their G-series which did the trick.

RE: Fire
 

CafeenMan my charger has just this feature :), when i brought it i was pleased that it had this, that night i left my battery on charge and at 4AM in the morning this mind blowing scream came from the shop, wife thought it was the smoke alarms lept out of bed screaming at me like a wild monkey, i ran to see what the hell was going on only to see my charger had completed it cycle LMAO!...

the wife was not as pleased with my new charger as i was :(, i supose i should have read that there was alert activated when fully charged but us R/C guys just like to play with our new toys i supose :)

RE: Fire
 

CafeenMan,

In my twenty years in R/C I have owned 15 transmitters (14 Futaba and 1 JR) and been around dozens more of all makes. I have never come across any radio where the batteries could not be removed. Could you be specific about which one could not have its batteries removed so I can steer new folks away from it?

RE: Fire
 

Steve, I just built a Concept 30 for a guy. The Transmitter was Futaba's 6 channel heli radio. Unfortunately, I don't remember the nomenclature. I did not look at it carefully, but when I opened the battery compartment, there was not an obvious place to unplug the battery. I could see the lead going down behind the plate behind the battery and going all the way across to the other side of the tx.

Maybe there was some simple way to unplug it, but it wasn't immediately obvious so I just put it back together. It looked like I would have to unscrew the back or something to get at the battery plug.

again, I could be wrong about it, but because it was a customer's radio, I didn't want to mess around with it.

BTW - I use Sirius chargers. I have two - one on a deep cycle "lil' Rascal" battery (30 amps maybe?) and the other on a 12v AC adapter.

RE: Fire
 

LOL... I'll bet your wife really loves your hobby now. I've never had a screaming charger, and now I'm glad. :)

RE: Fire
 

I currenlty have a Futaba 8UAF radio and stock battery, so it should be fine for me to charge 12 hours w/ no worries? =)...

RE: Fire
 

Your refrigerator runs all night too. Not to mention your alarm clock, your heater/air conditioner, etc.

While there are always some safety factors to consider, there's no need to worry over trivial matters.

RE: Fire
 

A noisy charger, Scaleman, what charger is it? I gotta get one.:D

RE: Fire
 

CafeenMan,
You are correct about Futaba transmitters. You have to remove the rear case to unplug the battery lead. :)

RE: Fire
 

i have to agree with CafeenMan man here guys i have come across such a radio :eek:


myself and my dad went halves on a load of R/C gear,in ths box of goodies was a lot of radio stuff and a futaba TX, i thought i had seen all futaba's TX's but this one had us stumped :( it was a good little TX by the looks of it, it had RPM meter and some other nice stuff but it wasnt working, so we took it apart to see what we could do but we could NOT FIND THE BATTERY lol

basicly the battery sat in the middle of 2 curcuit boards (lika a sandwich) the battery's were a very strange size and packed into a plastic box, then we found out that the main power wires from the batterys were soldered to the main board and no way of disconecting them via a clip or any normal means, after playing with it we found that the batterys had given up the ghost, and thats when we found out the battery's were not normal size, they were thinner and shorter if i remember right, and no matter where we tried we could not get these batterys [:o] the TX still sits in my loft in bits, its a chame BC it would be a good transmiter too, we powered it up by "OTHER MEANS" [>:] and it worked great but no batterys no TX :(

so yea there are some really strange TX out there and i wouldnt have belived it if i had not seen it with my own eyes lol, ill find out and get the model for ya sometime


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EDIT
bearmech

Sorry but the charger was only for electric plane flight packs not your normal flight packs, i supose you could play with to charge your basic flight pack but i aint that brave as it cost me like £80 about $160 i think, Told the wife i payed £30 for it so just between us ok guys ;) lol

CafeenMan.....

LOL yea she wasnt a happy camper after that, so after all that she wouldnt let me charge over night :( so i just disconected the speaker it a auto cut off anyway so know i can charge allllllllll night LOL

RE: Fire
 

The Futaba web site states that radios marketed to beginners and intermediates do not have removeable batteries. The higher end radios do. I have an 8UHP and the battery comes out easily. It still annoys me that I had to bypass that diode to charge in the Tx though. I was unplugging the battery for months, but started to worry about wear and tear on the plug.