Battery Power Flight Time

[petern]

Another Silly question to you vetrains out there,

How long can i fly on a standard 11.1v lipo? (using my trex450) I Keep landing after about 7 or 8 mins of hovering as i panic that she might fade and die in the sky? (Id rather crash from being a prat rather then my bat loosing power) ... I join a club next week and in doing so i might save you guys some earache lol,

Big Thank You for all the advice so far....you have saved me a lot of crashing!

P.S I have no strap to hold my battery in place is there anything apart from ties or elastic bands to hold it completely firm? the ties seem a bit hard to deal with in terms of replacing the battery with a fresh one.

[Made2Fade]

Use Hook and Loop tape on the battery tray and also the battery, then secure it with your elastic bands or velcroe straps.
As far as run time on your batteries... the only real way to find out would be by experimenting and seeing how much your putting back into the pack when charging. Obviously you will need a descent charger and balancer to do this. Just start off with a low ish figure and add say 30 seconds on each time. Then see how much you put back in. Make sure ya dont take out no more than 80% of the capacity. Id say 75% really though to be on the safe side. Just keep trial/erroring and adding 30 secs or so on each time until you reach the maximum amount you can take out of the pack. When you get to that point then that is the amount of flight time you will get. Bear in mind though that as your flying gets better then this will get lower as your pushing the motor harder. What is your current charger/balancer/lipos batteries?
Cheers
Lee

[Wheels]

im getting 7-8 mins on my 450 doing basic hovering, figure 8, loops and rolls. gentle flying = more time. harder flying less time...see what you are putting back into your packs and adjust time wise accordingly.

[Ade_Law]

different flying styles and different headspeeds, motors etc pull different amount of current so the only way to know for sure is to use a charger that tells you how much capacity your putting back in.

ideally you dont want to be putting more than 80% of the batteries capacity back in after a flight.

so if you have a 2200mah battery you dont want to be putting more than 1760mah back into the battery after a flight.

time your flights and adjust your flight time to suit. discharging the battery more than this will damage it and effect how many flights you can do before the battery fails.

Ade

[petern]

Thanks guys, i did a few tests today and it seems i was right to only fly for about 8 mins. anymore then that and I'm risking my battery. i use a 2100mah (as below) and its full of life for that amount of time. 9 mins was to long I had to put loads back in.

im not ready to push it to the limit yet as im still learing but I'l drop the flight times as and when i can fly like you guys.

Thanks again

[shaun.e]

I use 2170 3s packs and for general hovering flight I set the timer on the tx to 8 mins - like you I would rather land under control (ish) rather than run out of power. My ESC seems to stop me from taking off if the battery is too low anyway.

[petern]

Yeah thats how i was testing it, My esc also wont let the heli leave the ground if the bat is drained, so i landed after 8 mins took it up for 30 secs landed up for 30 secs landed and that was it, it wouldnt go back up after about 9 and half mins so after that i hovered for 9 mins and it just worried me to much so i dropped it by 1 min and now im quite happy to fly about until the tx tells me otherwise 8 mins is my flight time and thats plenty for my newbee level

[Tim Procter]

so i landed after 8 mins took it up for 30 secs landed up for 30 secs landed and that was it, it wouldnt go back up after about 9 and half mins so

Just a tip mate, Don't do that very often or your lipo will expire in quick time.

You must leave 20% in the lipo to get a full lifetime out of it.

[petern]

Thanks Buster, but i did only do it to get the flight time. once was enough lol I couldnt stand there and do that again for no reason lol

[Si Goodchild]

Guys,

As a beginner this is all really useful gen as I'm worried about killing my (one and only) LiPo. Because I've been doing some very short hops and hovers with my Mini Pred the total flight time is difficult to assess. For that reason I've been quitting as soon as I feel that the helicopter isn't responding to throttle/collective demands as it used to and I have to apply more power demand to get or sustain a hover. Is this a risky strategy? The supplied charger is fairly basic and only has an analogue dial for setting the charging current and an automatic switch-over to trickle charge when it senses that the battery is full. Should I be investing in something more elaborate or just adjusting my behaviour?

cheers,

Si G

[robgt]

What I usually do with a new pack when I want to know how long I can fly it is to fly it for 3 minutes, then after letting it cool down I pop it on the charger to see what's left in the pack and do the maths from that figure.

Cheers,
Rob