Charging lipos at the field??

[skyking]

Hi all

This has prob been asked before but as we dont have any mains down our field am just wondering what people use to charge there lipos up?
i used to use my car battery untill i went to go home on sunday and my car barrery was flat lol

Cheers
Paul

[harling65]

The same happened to me (flat car battery) so now I take my leaisure battery from the caravan. As I have a hyperion duo charger I will look to get a second leisure battery and run them in series for 24v, a single battery drops to 10v pretty quick and the charger slows up.

[ChrisB]

I have a leisure battery that will do 3 charges at most on 6s 5000 packs before the voltage drop is to severe for the charger to operate.

I am now using a generator running a mains psu.This gives me full power charging all the time and works well.

In the cold weather run a short extension into the back of the car so you can keep charger out of cold.

[Nick B]

Same as Chris,small quiet generator,fly all day on half a gallon of petty

[Jamin_00]

Car left running after a few charges. On the PL8 it will tell you the charge state of the car batt.

[Rob Barnes]

Depending on how many members you have its worth buying a gene and all chip in on the fuel each week.
I started using leisure batteries but after a few charges they would run out etc.

[Dudifiedad]

Honda 20i generator

[sj257]

A pair of leisure batteries in series running a pair of 14 cell chargers for the 600 elf Pro. Gives me about 6 recarges.

Take a 3rd leisure battery for charging 3s packs and running an inverter for the laptop etc.

sj

[panosg]

Honda 20i generator

Honda 10i generator here ........ not cheap but is well worth it.

[Streetluge Chris]

Paul we do have a generator we just can't get to it. I do have a few big car batterys if you won't one.

[skyking]

Paul we do have a generator we just can't get to it. I do have a few big car batterys if you won't one.

yeah i know but we are not at that flyin site where the generator is and like you say we cant get to it anyway.
that will be great thanks mate let me know when i can come and pick one up from you

cheers

[sj257]

yeah i know but we are not at that flyin site where the generator is and like you say we cant get to it anyway.
that will be great thanks mate let me know when i can come and pick one up from you

cheers

Worth doing a quick calculation on those car batteries to make sure you dont try to get too many charges from them and pancake them, sure fire way to kill them.

My pair of 85ah leisure batteries cry mercy after 6 charges of a 3300 12s pack for the 600 pro and that's based on not discarging below 20% of the 12s pack, and limiting the charge to 95%. I would suggest that a single car battery of 85Ah would only sensibly give two charges, and a third would discharge to the extent of starting to damage the battery potentially, if your charger doesn't scream "input voltage error" at you first.

Just something to be mindful of if you want those batteries to give you a reasonable life span.

sj

[KnifeEdge]

Just idle your car, much cheaper than buying a genie

[Darwil]

We have a bank of leisure batteries that are charged by Photovoltaic panels - cost not much different to generator but zero running costs.

[Guest]

Honda eu10i here.. brilliant. Everyone comments on how unobtrusive it is, although sometimes I have to bump into them a few times at the field before they even notice it's a generator.

You'll need a bigger one than that if multiple people want to use it though, this one struggled on its auto-throttle setting to run two PSUs - The Fusion PSU had to be turned down a bit. I presume it made a dogs dinner of the input AC waveform that the inverter was trying to produce - maybe a better behaved PSU would do better.

Great to be able to boil a kettle at the field (although it does have to be a tiny 400W one-cup one!).