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Originally Posted by KC8QVO
Hi everyone, I bought a new battery for my GP FlatOut extra today. Its a Thunder Power 1320mAh 3 cell. I am running an E-flite Park 400 outrunner motor with an APC 10x4.7 prop, ESC is a Castle Creations Pheonex 25. Will this battery take the load? Also, what is the 4 wire connector on it for? Do I charge through the same leads as the ESC connection?
Also, for you electric gurus heres a few questions regarding LiPo's. I was running an E-flite 860mAh 3 cell in this airplane. The guy at the hobby shop where I got it said that it would be ok and I would get decent flight times with it - which I did, only about 3 flights though. After the third flight the battery was draining VERY rapidly. On the 4th flight the motor shut off because of the low voltage circuitry about 5 seconds after I got off the ground. There was a good bit of time between the last 2 flights - probably a few weeks. I dont think that would have any affect, but you guys know best. Back to the battery though. The leads on it are MUCH smaller than the leads on the speed control, it has the ElectriFly connector on it - the small one, I think the wires are either #20 or #18. The ESC I have has #16 wires. I am thinking that the motor I am using was just drawing too much current from the battery and I dammaged the pack. What do you guys think? I was looking at the pack a little while ago and there is a little bit of a bulge on one side, it isnt very big but JUST noticeable. I didnt notice it until I took the velcro off and put it on the new battery. Does that mean that the pack is pretty bad? I would hate to throw it away.. I paid $50us for it  .
Steve |
Steve: You probably toasted that pack. There might not be much of a bulge, but I'd bet that it's pretty much done. It seems that the LiPo makers have been rather *optomistic*
in rating the discharge rates of their packs. There's a thread going on over in RCG where the TP head guy basically admits that their cells will do 15C - once. It's in the battery forum.
The 4 wires are for cell balancing. Your best bet would be to use them when charging via the proper connector and a balancing system. Investing in one of these does give one piece of mind - you're a lot less likely to have a LiPo "vent with flames" incident.
The wire sizes sound kinda small to me too. Then again, with wires that small, it might help to limit current draw
I don't know what your motor draws, but keeping the current generation of *20C* cells at about half of that rate will help them to last a lot longer.
Brad