Always being ready to fly despite unintelligent batteries

[revedit1]

There was a previous thread that for the life of me I cannot find again for some reason that covered a gentleman talking about how he needed to always have his drone capable of flying immediately despite all the hoo-ha of the batteries needing to be at storage level and asked for any advice on what a man was to do in such a circumstance.

This is something that I have been trying to solve as well. I bought a Gifi 8050 mAH battery and set it to storage charge on a SkyRC e680 to see how long I would be able to fly for, if it all. The day before I did the same with an older, original Yuneec battery that is 6,400 mAH. That lasted a good 15 - 20 seconds in the air at best before I was getting the first low voltage warning.

The Gifi 8050 gave me about 7:45 of flight time at storage charge, compared to the Yuneec 6400 at storage charge.

A) This is a potential solution for some people, potentially. Use that one (8050) and throw another on the charger right away.

B) Does this do any damage to the drone or battery to run it at storage charge? I wouldn't think so, but I don't know for certain.

 

[h-elsner]

B) No, as long as you don't try to fly too aggressive.

Always check the behaviour of the battery with true load using the flightlog that are recorded all the time. A chart for voltage can be easily done.


If you want, you can use the batterycheck tool. Download here: Downloads

br HE

 

[DoomMeister]

Most pilots that need to be able to fly on a moments notice such as first responders maintain a large store of batteries. They keep a stringent record for each battery and rotate the batteries so each spends its time as the “ready battery”.

If the charge time of the batteries averages 1 hour you would keep enough batteries at full charge to last for that hour. You can safely keep a battery at full charge for 24 to 48 hours without causing bad stress to its longevity. If the batteries are not used in that time switch them out with the next set to be the “ready group” and return them to storage level.

A separate discharge unit that has a higher wattage capability for discharging is very useful as the discharger on most multifunction chargers is only 10W. An alternative is to design a low voltage lighting system for the office/ready room that can be powered by the batteries to be discharged to storage level.