Battery Question

[Eagle's Eye Video]

So, while waiting for my camera upgrades and tablet delivery, I decided to confirm what I had seen
shooting in the last couple of weeks. I flew my H in circles to test how many minutes of flight time
I was getting out of each battery. Four batteries, last from 10 to 13 minutes each, and one for less
than 6 minutes... All batteries were flown to a level of 14.9V on the ST16.

No puffiness that I can discern... Should I just earmark that one battery, say for photo use
(which should usually be a shorter flight to get the shots you need). Or will flight times continue
to get shorter, and I should just recycle it now? I do know there have been times that I have
fully charged all batteries, but not gotten to fly for several days. I know that is not recommended.

I could use some bungee cords and a cinder block, to lasso my H at a height of 4 feet in my
apartment to discharge the batteries...

 

[Rayray]

Continue to do what you are comfortable with, but I assure you it is fine to fly so that you can land around the time of the first battery alert, at 14.3. That 14.3, once the craft is shut down, will become 14.6 or so unloaded. You can then store the battery until ready to charge for the next use.

Mark the one battery, and test it more. Perhaps it was not charged well. Every time before take-off, notice the H voltage reading on the left of your ST16 screen. This should be 16.6 to 16.8.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

Yep

Continue to do what you are comfortable with, but I assure you it is fine to fly so that you can land around the time of the first battery alert, at 14.3. That 14.3, once the craft is shut down, will become 14.6 or so unloaded. You can then store the battery until ready to charge for the next use.

Mark the one battery, and test it more. Perhaps it was not charged well. Every time before take-off, notice the H voltage reading on the left of your ST16 screen. This should be 16.6 to 16.8.

Yup, done that... All batteries started at 16.6 to 16.8 range... but that one battery seems to drop to about 15.3 within 2-3 minutes.
Awfully fast compared to the others, which I had noticed in the field too. And all popped back up to around 15.2 when I powered down.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

Second round of tests... 2 "good batteries" started at 16.6 - 16.8 and flown until 14.5 about 17 -18 minutes w/o gimbal.
The one suspect battery starts out at 16.4, and voltage drops to 15.2 in less than a minute... for the rest of the flight,
the discharge rate seemed to be pretty normal, giving me a total run time of 11:30. (Run time defined as time from
motors on, until motors off.)

 

[PatR]

The one battery is done. Save it for doing firmware upgrades and calibrations where less load is placed on the battery. What you have is a battery with symptoms of being deep discharged. I have two just like it. One was left on for ~30 hours and discharged to 12.8v, while the other was flown down to damage level on the first flight by another owner and came to me at a 12.8v state of charge.

Sorry to be blunt, but what might have been left out of the early battery testing description?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

Pat you will never need to apologize to me... I value your input. What other info would you like? I only had one time flying the
H that a battery warning came up and I landed immediately. Don't remember what the volts was at the time, as I was just trying
to land safely and this was my first experience of being in a "Land and land now" situation. That's why I have been so conservative
on the voltage, and have basically landed since, when I get to 15 volts. But it's likely that it is that battery that is so off from the others.

I have never doubted for a second that there is a learning curve with this. In fact, this weekend's tests were quite enjoyable for me...
was able to purely concentrate on the RC flying of this bird, without the camera or even a view on the ST16... just using the
controls and looking at the H.

 

[PatR]

Is there any possibility the battery had been left in the H and the H not turned off prior to this last charge? It's certainly possible you received a bad battery, the nature of proprietary shells is such we can't verify the origin of what we get, but it's not often a really bad one gets through. They do happen though.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

Not in my case... with my painting those back covers fluorescent green, I cant miss them! Always pulled.
And I do have Turnigy battery charge markers that I use all the time... I would pay $10 more for the battery
if one of the manufacturers comes out with an actual led readout on the battery. The only other history
on these batteries is that they have been charged and left for more than 4 days, probably at least 4 times in
the last couple of months that I've been actively flying.

 

[PatR]

I hope the length of storage wasn't it.

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

If needed for my learning, so be it. I need to get a voltmeter and learn how to check individual cells as well.

 

[Traveling drone]

I use a venom 1752 battery balance lead adapter, the charge leads need to be capped to prevent shorting battery, and a hobby king tenergy 5 in 1 cell meter. I use this after charging the battery and before each flight. This way I can check the total voltage of of the battery pack and the condition of each cell. The cost of this is around $30.00. I feel this is cheep insurance.