Useful Flight Duration

[PatR]

Nope, not going to groan. I sort of view the smart battery thing as being similar to a 35 year old millennial living at home with the parents, preferring that someone make decisions for them rather than doing it for themselves. Makes it easier to blame someone else when things don’t go right[emoji6]

 

[Dean'o]

How batteries are treated is quite important to their performance and life cycle. Someone that flies them to voltage minimums, stores them fully charged, or charges them immediately after a flight will eventually experience shorter flight times and reduced battery life.

The stock charger is barely adequate for charging the battery and useless for establishing proper voltage. From a manufacturer perspective it works great as it’s nearly impossible to over charge or short out s battery when using it, which almost eliminates product liability. For those that don’t understand battery requirements the stock charger is a great tool for increasing battery sales as those charging their batteries before putting them away for the day are effectively ruining their batteries.

Those that are smarter than their batteries have better experiences than those that aren’t.

best thing i did was buy a venom 4 station bat. tender...much better performance.

 

[Dean'o]

I fly for hours at a time to video sprint car races....have 8 battery's ..venom 4 station bat. tender saved me a lot of bat. problems.

 

[h1pst3r88]

I am pretty sure that I'll be returning my Venom ProDuo to get the 4 station tender. Seems like a no-brainer.

Good to know you guys endorse it.

I can't say enough about PatR's advice to understand our "fuel". It's still a process for me, but I see it as being at least as critical as developing skills with the sticks... maybe more.

Watching my H plummet from the sky and then taking the "walk of regret: to fetch it was a pretty strong reminder of its importance.

-Chris

 

[PatR]

I appreciate people should educate themselves on battery dynamics, however many do not as we live in a world of plug and play, time marches forward as does technology. How many new cars are on the market without ABS and other technologies that assist the modern driver? If we want more safety in the skies wouldn't it be prudent to offer technology to help mitigate UAV's falling from the sky due to duff fuel tanks?

Although engineers have been trying for years to find a way, they haven’t been able to engineer out stupid. The only progress has been in designing stuff that allows even more inattentive or lazy people to make use of them.

There’s an adage in manned aviation that states flying is not inherently dangerous, but it is extremely intolerant of mistakes and inattention. Flying drones or driving cars is no different. We pay attention or pay the price for failing to do so. Welcome to the real world.

 

[The Cookie Monster]

From my understanding from this discussion.. The way you have always understood to deal with battery shelf life no longer applies with these LiPo type batteries... We have always understood that a battery has a shelf life that is determined by how much you maintain a topped off level of charge during storage due to the fact that the battery has a memory and if you leave it during storage at a lower than topped off level of charge it will assimilate that lower level as the default topped off level of charge... and the charger will shut down at that level thus leaving your battery unfilled to full capacity... CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG... So my question is... What is the proper procedure for storing batteries on the H plus after use for long term (1 week or so)storage... I invested a decent amount of money in my H Plus and i would like to follow the most efficient methods of handling available... Please let me know... I want to get this right...

 

[rdonson]

@The Cookie Monster

LiPo battery care

 

[The Cookie Monster]

Thanx for the link...

 

[The Cookie Monster]

Should I get the aftermarket battery charger... Do you think that would help..?

 

[rdonson]

As has been said, the stock charger gets you in the air for the first time. After that you'll want a charger that will charge, charge to storage and discharge to storage if needed. There are a number of chargers that have been recommended by members of this forum. Pick the one that suits you best.

I went with one for the TH480 that suited what I wanted in a charger.

https://smile.amazon.com/EV-PEAK-Ty...8-1-fkmr0&keywords=morpilot+typhoon+h+charger

It charges the H batteries and the ST16. Its not as flexible as the Venom or a HiTec chargers in charging a lot of different batteries, programming charging rates and using a number of cables but it was dead simple for me to use.

 

[The Cookie Monster]

Thanx again... I ordered the Venom... Oh yeah I followed your charger link... I was gonna get that one... Hmm... Correct me if I am wrong but that also shows the cells charge level so as to tell if they need to be balanced or not... That one looks cool too...

 

[PatR]

Thanx for the link...

In addition, if you have an Apple phone a write up on lipo battery care and life cycle was uploaded to their battery maintenance stuff on 10/31/18. It’s intent is directed more towards how they are used in the phone but overall it’s pretty comprehensive and easy to understand.

Short version is lipos break down chemically over time, along with use cycles, storage levels, charging methods, and temperature. They are quite sensitive to the manner they are used, and can be extremely belligerent when treated improperly. Run a lipo cell down below 3.2v and we can ruin one the first time used.

 

[rdonson]

Thanx again... I ordered the Venom... Oh yeah I followed your charger link... I was gonna get that one... Hmm... Correct me if I am wrong but that also shows the cells charge level so as to tell if they need to be balanced or not... That one looks cool too...

Yes, the color display shows the voltage of each cell. Its worked well for me with the only thing being an occasional message that it can't read all the cells but that's just a dirty contact. I usually remove the battery, visually inspect the contacts on battery and charger and if nothing is amiss I plug it back in again and 90% of the time its going to work properly. Sometimes I just spray the contacts with contact cleaner.

 

[The Cookie Monster]

As has been said, the stock charger gets you in the air for the first time. After that you'll want a charger that will charge, charge to storage and discharge to storage if needed. There are a number of chargers that have been recommended by members of this forum. Pick the one that suits you best.

I went with one for the TH480 that suited what I wanted in a charger.

https://smile.amazon.com/EV-PEAK-Ty...8-1-fkmr0&keywords=morpilot+typhoon+h+charger

It charges the H batteries and the ST16. Its not as flexible as the Venom or a HiTec chargers in charging a lot of different batteries, programming charging rates and using a number of cables but it was dead simple for me to use.

In addition, if you have an Apple phone a write up on lipo battery care and life cycle was uploaded to their battery maintenance stuff on 10/31/18. It’s intent is directed more towards how they are used in the phone but overall it’s pretty comprehensive and easy to understand.

Short version is lipos break down chemically over time, along with use cycles, storage levels, charging methods, and temperature. They are quite sensitive to the manner they are used, and can be extremely belligerent when treated improperly. Run a lipo cell down below 3.2v and we can ruin one the first time used.

Wow all this is great info... Thanx to all... This is the best place to figure all this out... This is like the R&D department of Yuneec itself... LOL...

 

[Dr Delta]

Wow all this is great info... Thanx to all... This is the best place to figure all this out... This is like the R&D department of Yuneec itself... LOL...

Better....!

 

[PatR]

Too bad Yuneec doesn’t pay us much attention. They could save a lot of R&D and problem resolution money that way.