Word to the wise. r.e Deans connectors

[LipolyGone]

Had a very lucky escape the weekend with my 500cf.
I have 3 packs for this heli two flight power 3300 6s & a maxpoly 3000 6s.
I have used deans connectors to couple the battery & speed controller.

On friday I went to the flying site & put the maxpoly on the heli & connected it all up, the heli did nothing i.e no power even to boot the radio gear up, the heli seemed dead. I put the flight power on it & all is ok it fired up fine so I fly both FP packs with no problems at all.
I checked the maxpoly pack with my multimeter & all is ok with it the deans pins in the socket are live & showing the required voltage to be fully charged so I decide to give it another go on Saturday.
Well it still wouldnt work so saturday night I resoldered the male plug on the esc as we felt the temper may have gone out of the spring tab on this side of the deans causing the problem. It wasnt the male side it was the female socket on the pack causing the problem. Some how it had elongated it's self so that the plug when pushed in could not make electrical contact.
In leu of this episode I'm never going to be buying deans connectors unless I know for sure they are the genuine article. It seems the ones I have been buying are not genuine but I didnt know that at the time when I bought them.
Just thought I would let you guys out there know just incase your running deans & non deans connectors on your electric helis.
Martin

[chugga-bug]

Glad you found the problem

What do you think of the Maxpoly pack? I'm thinking about getting some of 'em myself. Are they any good? What sort of times/performance are you getting from them?

[LipolyGone]

It's as good as my FP packs & a lot lighter making the heli far nimbler in the air. I am realy pushing this heli for 6 minutes & am puting back 75% of the rated capacity of the pack.
Unfortunately with most lipos these days they are like rocking horse poo. Maxpoly have been out of stock of them since the 27th of March though I have been told hopefully they are expecting stock very soon.
They are worth having but availability has unfortuantely made me source my lipos elsewhere.
Martin

[moyesboy]

Fiday evening I was happily flying my 450 over the back wall of my garden flipping and tick tocking and then I landed it, and tried to spool up again and it was dead. No radio, no power. I found wiggling the power wire made it intermittently power up.

On closer inspection the + wire on the battery had come unstuck from the deans and was held on only by the heat shrink. This pack has done a lot of cycles and is almost 2 years old. Soon sorted and back in the air, and the rest of my packs inspected for similar problems (non found).

How lucky is that? My heli close to becoming a dead lump mid flight...

[Sesame]

You were lucky there, be thankful for it as it doesn't happen very often.

Cheers for the headsup on the deans. I notice on one of my reciever packs over the weekend that it pushed together exceedingly easily, and if I wiggled it I could make it lose contact. so that will be changed before next weekend.

[Maxpoly]

Martin,

Having had this EXACT thing happen to me a year or so ago with 'Deans' I bought cheaply, I only stock and sell the genuine article now. I had a long chat with Mike at Aurrora and we are both agreed it's not worth the risk as although some of the copies are OK, they are of variable quality and can fail without much warning.

Andrew