zsultan

My Feedback: (35)

Hi,

Can you guys please suggest me some good inexpensive lipo battery and charger for T-rex 450 XL CCPM heli. I heard from some one that Thunder power batteries are good.
Please also let me know what make and capacity battery will be good.

Thanks

Nankin Hobby

The 2100 3SPL battery from Thunder Power will be fine for you. $70 but you get quality and great customer service. The Cell pro charger from FMA direct is the best for the money I have found. $70 also with another $15 for the adapter board to charge thunderpower batteries. (that charger also balances for you, must to have with a 3S + pack)

zsultan

My Feedback: (35)

Thanks Nankin,

Guys what do you think about Hobbico elite charger?

Nankin Hobby

Its great for small batteries. If you are doing anything over a receiver pack......you will be dissapointed. For the money you can do so much better.

Remyrw

On the bargain side of chargers, the basic align ones. Particularly if you would prefer AC to DC for charging. The downsides are no voltage readout and no mah input details. It does indicate each cell seperately as to charging or finished, so you can get a rough feel for whether things were balanced or not. It uses the TP balance plug.

On batteries I've been using the DN Power packs. I just got the combo deal from ReadyHeli, two 20C 2150mah packs for around $90 is pretty good. They come with balance plugs but no main connector. They also come with a pigtail to convert the balance plug to the standard Thunderpower one. I haven't run the 20C's yet but the 15C I have has worked fine so far.

WhtBronco

Going cheap with li-po's, chargers or helis is a mistake. I run only Thunder Power li-po's and use the Astro 109 charger with the Astro Blinky balancer.

Thunder Power has some nice chargers as well. The Hobbico chargers are a joke for li-po's IMO, but it works great for ni-cd and ni-mh for my Tx and Rx packs.

Remyrw

I agree overall, but sometimes cheap is all you can afford to start with. In the case of the charger, it's definitely something to use until you get something better, not a long term solution. I have yet to find a long term solution I like. So, I'm still looking for ideas for an AC powered charger that gives mah input and balancing, preferably able to handle 2-4S packs. I don't charge at the field and if I do I have a converter to turn DC into AC anyway, I don't want to run a converter all the time at home where I do most of my charging. This was an issue with my cars as well and luckily duratrax offered a race quality charger with a small switching power pack that you plugged in like a wall transformer. That's an acceptable style solution, but most of those don't seem to offer enough power for the larger packs these days. I'd prefer the option to charge at at least 2a, with the ability to use an automatic mode or manually control it.

For the batteries, don't buy junk, but do your research. TP is not the only good brand and more money isn't always better. I've heard good things about a number of brands and sometimes about specific model lines for batteries. My research on the DN Power packs indicates that while they're not as good as the TP's, the areas they're not as good in aren't a huge deal to most of us and as long as you can find a battery that suits your purpose (they don't have a lot of options) they're a good deal. Align batteries are another good option, folks have been discussing whether they're just TP's under another name and the very fact that it's considered possible says all I need to know about the quality, even if the rumor isn't true.

WhtBronco

That's true sometimes you don't have the money to do it right. So IMO don't do it. I've tried to cheap and it always costs me more and is generally very frustrating. I saved for 19 months to get my Raptor 50 and almost a year to get a T-Rex so I could get the parts that were right for me.

Cheap and helis just doesn't work IMO.

mmillerr

FMA has dropped the price of the CellPro to $59 and the TP adapter to $9.95. I just ordered one of each!

rcboosted

My DN Power lipos are running fantastically. I don't know what it is "lacking" where the TP delivers. The TP is actually heavier than the DN Power if the specs are correct online. I also picked up the 20C from readyheli, but haven't ran them enough times to give it a thumbs up or down. My 15C DN powers however have been great.

I can't believe FMA dropped the price on the 4S. $70 is already a fantastic deal. At $60, it's a steal for a blanace charge with display. Make sure to pick up the pig tail ($1.99). It goes really well with the DN Power batteries because the DNs comes with an adapter for the TP charger. I just snip it in half and solder it to the pigtails. Instant charger cable.

Remyrw

From what I heard the main negative compared with the TP's was fewer cycles at peak performance. Since even at 200 cycles both brands were in good shape I'm REALLY not worried about it. The drop off isn't exactly that sharp anyway and if I get 5% better performance after 300 cycles out of a pack that cost me nearly 50% more I would rather have my money and buy a couple extra packs.

I'm going to make my first flight on the 20c's tomorrow morning if I can drag my butt out of bed early enough to get the flight in and still get to work on time. As much as I'd love to I can't just skip breakfast, I'm just not one of those folks. Heheh, I'd feel like my heli when the battery is tanking.

rcboosted

Nice report on that 200 cycle. I haven't gotten that far yet, but nice to know that they are holding up. I agree completely with you on the price versus power cycles. It's so much cheaper I don't mind losing a few cycles. Pay $100 and get 500 cycles, or pay $50 and get 300. I'd pick the $50.

On the 15C DNs I have I found that they don't show their full potential until after 20 ~ 30 cycles. I timed all my flights and I've found the chargers are putting in less and less after same amount of flight times. So for these 20Cs I'm taking really easy. Flying only half of their capacity at the moment to make sure I get their full poential. Thought maybe I'd share that before you fly them.

credence

My Feedback: (2)

TP packs are overpriced. Nice batteries, but not for the prices they charge. Theres many other brands out there that are much cheaper and perform just as good.

FLYMIKE

I run Apex and TP and cant tell any difference between them except price. Apex 42.00 - TP 70.00.

Nankin Hobby

A large sum of the money comes back to you in technical help. if anything fails with the battery not at your fault, its replaced 95% of the time by TP. I have yet to see another manufac. do that. They have great customer service also. At anytime you can call them up and ask for assistance. That support is what you get for the price. Also what many people do not know is that every thunder power battery is "custom made" per order. Thunderpower does not make batteries to "have-on-hand" for when you call them for a 2100 3S T-Rex pack. They make it by hand right then and there. Most other manufacturers just have them made (who knows how long ago) and have them sitting around ready to ship. Most internet sites that you buy batteries from are like this. They have packs sitting around for you to buy. So thats another thing the 70 goes towards. So when you look at it....the extra 30 goes for great customer service, fresh cells, and endless support. Not a bad deal.

rcboosted

I doubt there are many technical problems with a lipo pack that isn't a user's fault. It's usally the user's fault. (crash, short, over discharge etc) I mean, to off set the 75%, I would have to get warranties for 75% of my packs. For an expensive lipo pack the defect rate better not be 75%. In another words, I would never be able to take advantage of warranties. I wouldn't want to, I want it to work since I paid for the quality. And since most problems ARE caused by the user, it's best to have cheap packs so accidents aren't as expensive. But to each his own. This is just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt.

P-40LUVR

I have a little white plug with 4 wires on it..2 black and 2 red,will the Cellpro charger hook up to this battery?
Here is a picture of my battery in the TREX.(1800mah)
Im using a cheap Align charger right now..it's the little orange square one but it takes over 2 hours to charge.

rcboosted

You need to buy their pigtail and solder on the appropriate adapter on the other end. The reason why I said DN Powers is a perfect match is becasue that adapter comes with the battery. This will probably work. http://www.helidirect.com/product_in...oducts_id=1130 Cut off the female end and solder it on to the charger pigtail.