Ep 68: Best of episode – Batteries!

[00:00:01] Hi, guys. While Ron and Tom are taking a well-deserved break, we hope you enjoy this best of episode of RC Plane Lab. And remember, they'll be back with new episodes starting June 11th. We hope you enjoy. Podcast for anyone interested in RC Airplane. We'll share tips and tricks on how to build models and talk about successful flights, epic crashes, and everything in between. Visit us at rcplanelab.com to sign up for our email list and to ask us questions.

[00:00:37] You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please help us out by rating and reviewing us in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now, here are your hosts, Ron and Tom. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the RC Plane Lab

[00:00:53] Podcast. I'm Ron. And I'm Tom. Today, we're going to be talking about something that we have all dealt with, something that we have all used and had to charge and had to discharge no matter what kind of airplane you fly, whether it's electric or nitro or gas. We're going to be talking about batteries. Some of the batteries we're going to talk about are the NICADs, the NIMH. Old school.

[00:01:15] Cool. We'll talk about the LiPos. And we'll also cover some of the newer A123s. And we'll kind of go over some of the connectors, too, that you would use to connect those to each other or to your charger or to your airplane. So, I think we ought to get started probably with the oldest of the bunch, the NICADs. I don't remember using NICADs. I think there's

[00:01:45] Probably a couple of planes that I've bought at, like, swap meets that have had those in there. But I've replaced, the receiver packs and those kind of things. So, maybe a little bit more about it than I do. Do you want to kind of talk about it?

[00:02:02] Sure. Yeah. Because they're old, like me, I have quite a bit of experience with NICADs. But to be honest, we used to treat them pretty much or very similar to how we treat the nickel metal hydrants, which we're going to talk about later. So, I mean, they were good at what they did in their time. You could get high capacity and they could support high discharge rates.

[00:02:35] We could hit them pretty hard with high charge rates as well. They were prone to developing a memory, which, NIMHs are also. But the NICADs didn't seem like, or at least in my experience with NICADs, it didn't seem like the memory was all that hard to overcome. hit them hard a couple of times, especially if they've been in storage, that would seem to be the worst thing for them because they self-discharge, over time. So, you hit them hard

[00:03:08] A couple of times with the charger and discharge them a couple of times, cycle them.

[00:03:12] We had chargers back then that were capable of high charge rates and discharge rates, and it would cycle the packs automatically. And usually that was enough, at least in my experience, to sort of bring that or bring them out of that memory loss phase, if you will. But it did seem like there was always some sort of permanent damage. And, once you started down the path of memory loss, just like with aging, they kind of just progressed, there was never,

[00:03:42] You were never really going to fully bring them back. And you definitely would shorten the life of the battery with those high discharge rates. And they don't seem to be as durable as the NIMH batteries

[00:03:52] Seem to be. Yeah. So, I looked a little bit of things up on them, too, because like I said, I'm not familiar with these as much. So, you said that they do lose a charge while they're kind of in storage. What I found is that, yeah, it's about 10% in a month just when it's sitting there not being used. Okay. Yeah. That sounds about right, actually. Yeah. And most of those were in like the double-A size kind of thing. Right. Yep. So, these were used more for receiver packs, not necessarily

[00:04:24] For flying your airplane, correct? Right. Yeah, yeah. And because of the high self-discharge rate, back in the day, we used to keep NICAD, especially our receiver batteries, we used to keep them, when we'd put the airplanes away for the winter, we would take the receiver pack out of the airplane and put it on our bench and put it on a trickle charger. And Ace, Ace RC used to make them and SonicTronics made them and a bunch of other companies made them. But it was like a, it was just like an add-on. You would plug your regular charger into the wall, your regular wall

[00:04:59] Charger that came with like your radio. And then you would plug in line with the receiver lead, this little add-a trickle device. And what it would do is it would step down the voltage and from it coming from your wall charger to about two-tenths C roughly, about 200 milliamps, let's say. And that was enough to keep the battery topped off and enough to kind of stay even with the self-discharge rate. So, that's, 10% per month. Is that what you said?

[00:05:30] Yeah, that's what I, what I found. Yeah. So, that, that, if you do the math, that's probably what, what those, small little add-a trickle devices would do is it would just barely keep ahead of that self-discharge rate. So, it would maintain your battery over the winter, which is why those things don't work with nickel metal hydrides, I guess, because those probably don't self-discharge as, as steep. We will get to that because that is actually the

[00:05:57] Opposite of being true. Really. Okay. All right then. So, the thing, okay, so both NIMH and the NICADs, each, each cell is 1.2 volts. So, being, yeah, correct. So, being the, the double A size, a normal double A battery that's not rechargeable is one and a half volts, 1.5 volts.

[00:06:18] So, that's, that's really close, when it's fully charged, it's going to be close to that 1.5, 1.6 volts, which makes it, a direct replacement, not only for RC airplanes, but like for using it in, in things around the house. But the only problem with that is you don't want to use it in, or you didn't want to use them in things that would, that would kind of be stored for a long time because of that discharge. Nice thing about them, do I found, is that they will, they will have about 2,000 charge cycles before they kind of wear out. And out of all the batteries

[00:06:54] We're talking about, that is the highest cycle count that I could find. So, yeah, that is actually kind of nice. And, they're, they're not too expensive. The cool thing about them too, though, is that they can be stored in a discharge state without really having issues being charged later. A lot of the other batteries that we deal with today, you're very specific on how you charge them. These kind of just seem like they were, use it and forget it kind of thing. It's not

[00:07:27] Something where you had to take a lot of special care of an iCAD battery. So, right. And that, would be nice to kind of get back to some of these batteries, but you'll, you'll see with some of the ones that we use now, they have a, there's a lot that they provide that the iCADs didn't.

[00:07:48] Okay. So, the other things that, was kind of bad that kind of got people away from iCADs was that they were really considered to be toxic. They had cadmium in them. That's kind of what made the, the battery being nickel cadmium. So, they couldn't be disposed of in a landfill.

[00:08:06] The, or the other problem too, is if you needed a higher capacity battery, you really couldn't get those, because they were limited to, the capacities that they could fit in that cell size. so you, you didn't really have a lot of, a lot of options when it came to that. So, that's kind of, that's kind of the, the iCAD battery. Yeah. I think, I think the

[00:08:29] Highest capacity, iCAD that I think I ever used was around 2,000 milliamp per,

[00:08:36] Per cell, subsea size cell. Yeah. See, going, going back, I think like the first RC car or truck I bought, actually came with a, a iCAD pack. The more I'm thinking about it, I wanted to say it was a seven cell maybe. Is that, does that sound right? Yeah, that's, yeah, that sounds right. And I yeah, not a lot of, not a lot of, not a lot of battery that you could use for a long time.

[00:09:05] So those died pretty quick. that takes us on to the nickel metal hydride. That's kind of what took over for the iCADs. they really didn't come out, until the late eighties. So they're kind of a newer type battery compared to the, the iCADs. I mean, the iCADs go all the way back to like the late 1800s, early 1900s, not obviously for RC airplanes, but in, in different uses.

[00:09:31] They also are the, 1.2 volts per cell when they're fully charged, they're 1.5 to 1.6 volts, give or take somewhere. and I found like with cycles, I said 2000 cycles for the iCADs with, with an NIMH, you really, depending on size can get between like 500 to a thousand cycles out of them. it seems like the higher, the, the higher the capacity battery, the less cycles you get. So there's, there's something with quite a dramatic difference.

[00:10:05] It is quite a, quite a difference actually. the nice thing about them though, is they will hold between like 30 and 40% higher capacity than the iCADs. So, I think of like of a similar size, you mean? Yeah. So you like your, your double A size, whatever that's called. I think you can get them in like 2,600 milliamp hours is what I just bought for the, the receiver packs I got for, for the telemaster. so that's quite a bit higher than what the iCADs were. so this,

[00:10:38] We kind of touched on it before this still, the NIMH battery still has the memory issues, that the iCADs did. So, they, you can bring them back easier than the, iCADs. So, and really to kind of reset that memory, what you need to do with your NIMH batteries is make sure you drain them all the way down and then charge them back up and do that, every 10, 15 cycles. It's not something you have to do all the time. Yeah. But when you're dealing with,

[00:11:12] With half the number of cycles that you could do with a iCAD, those extra cycles to bring it back

[00:11:18] Add up quick. That's true. I never thought of that. yeah, it's, I guess the good thing about those is they're cheap. I think the, the receiver batteries I just bought were, nine bucks or 10 bucks a piece, something like that. So really that's, yeah. Off Amazon, I just bought a

[00:11:34] Couple of, six, six volt NIMH packs and I think they were $7 each. Maybe that's what mine was

[00:11:41] Too. I don't remember right offhand, but it was, it was very cheap. Yeah. It was sub 20 bucks for both of them delivered. and yeah, I mean, you can't, I don't think you can beat that really for brand new batteries. That's a pretty good deal. And new batteries, it's cheap

[00:11:55] Insurance, right? Oh, absolutely. Even if they're just 10 bucks,? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

[00:12:01] So the nice thing about the NIMH too is, they work in, in a wider temperature range than the NICADs did. So you, you will be able to pull out. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. You'll be able to pull out more power from them. Right. and I forgot about that. I do remember,

[00:12:17] Back in the day with the NICAD batteries, we had to be really, really careful on hot days. especially when, when, when charging them, cause they would either, not want to charge or they would get really, really hot and they would falls peak and do all these nasty things.

[00:12:33] Yeah. I forgot all about that. Yeah. So, I mean, that's, I guess, kind of why we went with them instead of the NICADs too. yeah. And some of the other things, it's nice having that extra capacity. Well, that too. And, so when everybody changed to NICADs or I'm sorry, to, NIMH over NICADs though, the chargers changed. So they had to, right. So they don't charge as easy, as the NICADs do. I know that they're sensitive to being overcharged. If you overcharge

[00:13:05] Them, that really kills the batteries quickly. and they get really hot. Yeah. And I, so I don't know exactly how the chargers work, but I know there's a whole, whole thing that chargers go through to, to charge these batteries. actually the chargers we use today are really kind of amazing pieces of equipment when you look at them. it's true. There's a lot, a lot built into them. but, do you, I mean, do you kind of have any idea how the,

[00:13:31] How the NIH batteries get charged? Yeah. I mean, we, we charge them same sort of, profile, if you will, as we would charge a NICAD. The difference is in the, is in how the charger detects the peak, when the battery has reached a, a, a peak state of charge, on the old NICAD days when, when a battery, would, if you were to look at it as, as like a graph, you would see the steep curve as you're dumping voltage into the battery as you're charging it. And then when the battery would reach its peak, it would simply

[00:14:03] Reverse that, that, that path, if you will. And it would drop the voltage would drops off really steeply. And the chargers were very, it was very easy to pick up that change in voltage. the NIMH batteries on the other hand, same deal. They sort of have a steep, curve on the initial, ramp up for the charge, but as it gets closer and closer and closer to, to maximum capacity or the point at which it won't accept any more voltage, it doesn't,

[00:14:35] It doesn't reverse directions very quickly. It, it, it kind of hangs out up there at the peak of that, of that curve. And it comes down actually very, very slowly. and if you continue dumping voltage into it, that it'll eventually come down and, and the part, the charger can detect it. But by that time, usually the battery's hot and you've done some damage with the new NIMH, battery, that, that came on, they sort of had to change the way chargers detected that,

[00:15:07] That, that, that delta peak change, in voltage that had to be much, much, much more sensitive.

[00:15:13] So, whereas, on the old NICAD chargers, let's say that the delta peak detection was say 0.1, a 10th of a volt because, and that was safe because it would drop off so quickly, it would go, it would change a 10th of a volt on its way down really, really quickly, within a couple of seconds. And the chargers had no problem picking that up. The, the NIMHs aren't like that, like I said, so the, we're, we're dealing with delta peak settings of, 0.03 or, or 0.04, so, three one hundredths or four

[00:15:47] One hundredths of a volt, so that they can, so that the charger can really, really see that peak and shut off in time before it damages the pack. And that was the, the biggest change, in the chargers and the charging profiles that we used for NIMHs. So the, the, what they were looking for,

[00:16:06] They just kind of had to be a little bit smarter and, and detect a smaller voltage drop. And that's

[00:16:11] Really the only difference in charging them then? Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, it's the same, it's the same, we're just dumping direct current voltage into the battery at a, at a preset, gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? Amperage just gave me. Thank you. just like we did with NICADs. the only difference really is the, is the, is the delta peak detection. Yeah. So

[00:16:36] Then with, with the new batteries, the, the charger just kind of had to keep up, they had to get a little bit smarter, as the batteries progressed also. So, and we'll, we'll kind of, we'll notice that that is a, a trend with all batteries. as you get new batteries, there's got to be a little bit different way to charge them, to keep them safe and to make a long time. Right. So the other thing with, with NICADs though, so, or I'm sorry, with NIMH that we talked about a little bit before the high self ditch or discharge rate, the NIMH battery

[00:17:10] Discharges while in storage. what I found was 20% self discharge in the first 24 hours after charge. wow. So you have a huge drop, in the first day after you charge it. And then it, it, it kind of levels off the same as the NICADs did with 10% or so a month afters. so that's, about twice as fast as the NICAD batteries. so the best practices, with, with the NIMH batteries is make sure you charge the night before you go out to the field.

[00:17:45] One of the worst things to deal with is, is getting out to the field, not having a charged battery or, losing a plane because you didn't do your proper checks to make sure that you have the voltage that you were supposed to have. So where you really don't notice this though, is because, the, the, the NIMH batteries can hold a lot more, their, their bigger capacity. So they'll hold more milliamp hours, which the milliamp hours is kind of the size of your fuel tank. The, the bigger, the bigger, milliamp hour capacity you have for the battery,

[00:18:18] The bigger the fuel tank and the longer it will run, whatever it is running. So since you do have that 30 to 40%, amount of headroom over the NICADs, you really don't necessarily notice that the drop, going from an NICAD to an NIMH just in capacity because it's so much more.

[00:18:39] So make sure you always charge those batteries the night before you go fly. So you don't lose an airplane. Yeah. Right. That's good advice. I mean, I, most of the time when you're, when you're just flying a little, nitro plane or something like that around, you're not using a lot of power running your servos. They don't do a lot when you're in the air, you're not pulling a lot of power out of it. So those receiver batteries last a good amount of time. which is why, 2,600 milliamp hours is enough for an afternoon of flying with some leftover. Usually. Yep. Yeah. Depending on what you're doing, but most of the

[00:19:12] Time. so still getting into the habit of checking them between flights. just make sure you have the voltage in it and do a load test and all that stuff and you should be just fine. And if worse comes worse, throw on a charger, halfway through the afternoon to kind of peak it off before you, before you fly again. Well, and the chargers today are

[00:19:32] So convenient that you can, a lot of them will run off a 12 volt battery. just hook them onto the battery of your car while you're at the field and, charge one while you're flying the other one. Not a big deal. Usually. Yeah. Do you have anything else on NIMH or should we just move on? No, I was gonna, I was gonna mention that, getting, getting to that, self discharge is I seem to remember when we, when we made the conversion or shortly after we made the conversion to NIMHs or, or when they became popular, I should say somebody, somebody compared it to me, as like a faucet. So a NICAD, let's say you've got a

[00:20:09] Faucet and it's half turned on. So you're only getting half the power. So there's more restriction to losing power, so to speak. whereas the NIMHs were so, everybody was saying at the time, anyway, they were so much more efficient at transferring power and stuff that they self discharged because there was just no resistance to prevent it. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that was, I don't know, something I thought worth, it was worth mentioning.

[00:20:36] Yeah. I don't know. Actually. I know like there are actually some people that will still recommend the NICAD batteries and you can still buy the NICAD batteries, for like a, like bigger planes that will have more of an amp draw than a, than nickel metal hydride.

[00:20:52] So, like the NICADs handle amp draw of a higher, higher amp draw better than the NIMH do. So I, I, yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know how that would work. Maybe somebody, if they know what they're talking about more than we do, can reach out and set us straight

[00:21:10] On that. Okay. No, that was, that was really, that was all I, all I had left for

[00:21:17] NIMH. Well then we'll move on to my favorite battery, the, the LiPo lithium polymer. Boy, what a revolution these things were, huh? Right. This is the battery that really opened up electric flight because of the amount of power, the amount of energy you could store in such a small, in such a small battery. I mean, really the size on it, it's amazing.

[00:21:44] It truly is. But not only that, but how fast you can take it out. yeah, you can, you can really pull a lot of, a lot of amperage, a lot of power out of these batteries in a very short amount of time without damaging them. so it wasn't until, actually it was about the same time really that they came out, that they were commercialized as the NIMH did. It was only, five years after that, something like that. but where they've made a, a, a big step forward, like I

[00:22:19] Said, in capacity and, and how fast you can take that power out. Not only that, but you can, the self discharge is really, really low compared to any of the other batteries we've talked about so far with a lipo, you get one and a half to 2% discharge a month just from for, or just from sitting. gosh, that's almost nothing. Yeah, really. I mean, so if they're going to sit for a long time and keep them at storage charge, you're going to be fine. You're not going to have a lot of degradation. that's one of the nice things about them. So charge cycles, that's, that's

[00:22:53] Problematic. So the charge cycles, how many you get out of it really depend on how you treat your battery. So you, I mean, there are batteries that if you, if you abuse them really within two or three charges, you can kill the battery completely. Oh yeah. Most of the time you get like between one to 300, 500 charges out of them maybe. but it depends on how, how close you are to pulling out the, but pretty much to turn the faucet all the way on the, the closer you are to pulling as

[00:23:29] Much of that power out quickly as it, it will give you the faster you're, you're damaging that battery or the lipo batteries all have labels and the labels are very important to know what the battery is. You need to pay attention to those. they, they all tell you, the labels tell you the capacity. So it will tell you how many milliamp hours that battery holds. They, most of the time will tell you the cell count, whether it's a 2S or 3S. but they will also, well,

[00:24:01] I shouldn't say also, they will tell you for sure the voltage. So, whether it's a, so like a 2S battery, is going to be a 7.4 volt, a 3S battery will be 11.1 volts. So what the way they figure that out is, on a lipo, for the other batteries we talked about, the NICADs and the NIMH, they were 1.2 volts a cell. Lipos are 3.7 volts a cell. So the, the voltage is higher per each cell. And the nice thing about lipos too, is they don't have to be formed,

[00:24:35] Into a specific shape. They will work. I mean, you can even curve them around. You can pretty much put them in whatever shape, you want, not you as in like us, but when they're manufacturing the battery. So the other thing, you'll find on the, on the label will be the, sometimes not always on this one, the C charge for, or the C rating for charging. What C rating is, is how fast you can either charge it or discharge it. So 1C is going to be charging it at the capacity

[00:25:16] Times one. So a 5,000 milliamp hour battery is going to be charged at five amps. Does that make

[00:25:25] Sense? Yeah. Cause a thousand milliamps is one amp. So a 5,000 milliamps is five amps.

[00:25:31] Right. So if you have like a 1300 milliamp hour battery, you charge it at 1.3 amps.

[00:25:37] Right. Unless it says 2C or 3C, but really like for me, even if it says you can charge it two to three times the capacity, I don't like to do that because that will, while it will take it, it will degrade the battery faster. So the, yeah, the best practice for charging is always going to be just charging at 1C, or less than that. Right. Yeah. It doesn't have to be exactly 1C, if you, if you have time and you want it to go for a couple hours and then just let it go, for half of that. So charge it at two and a half amps if it's a 5,000 milliamp hour

[00:26:10] Battery. So with, with saying that also when you're charging normally, what you're charging at 1C is going to take one hour to put in because, it's 5,000 milliamp hours. So to charge it, you go to the 5 amps and putting 5 amps in is going to take one hour to charge. So whenever you charge at 1C, you're going to be right at that one hour mark, give or take a little bit, there's going to be some fudge factor in there, but you're going to be right about one, one hour to charge.

[00:26:40] Well, and usually you're not starting from zero milliamps.

[00:26:43] That's correct. Yeah, you're right. It's, it's not usually right at zero. so the other thing, on the label that you're going to see is the C rating for the continuous just or discharge. so that's going to be how many amps you can draw continuously out of that battery. A lot of times you're going to see like 20 C 30 C. I mean, some of the new ones are even like 60 C. So what that means this one I'm looking at here is a 50 C. Oh, okay.

[00:27:15] The one I have on the charger right now is actually a 30 C I think. but it's, I've had it for a couple of years. so the, okay. To, to figure out how many amps you can pull out of that is, is simple math. So if it's a 5,000 milliamp hour battery and it's a 20 C battery, then that's going to be five amps because we changed that to amps and then multiply it by 20. So you will be able to pull out a hundred amps from that battery, continue continuous without technically harming that battery. So that's what it's designed to

[00:27:51] Do. So you can a hundred amps is a lot out of a battery. I mean, really? Yes. And it goes up from there. So what's yours? How, how big is the battery? this is a little 2200 three cell. Okay. It's rated at 50 C. So 2200. So 2.2 amps times 50. And that's a small, small battery then. And you can pull out over a hundred amps out of that little battery without hurting. Yeah. That's impressive. That's very impressive. so you don't have

[00:28:22] To take the power out that fast. And it's always a good idea if you want your batteries to last a little bit longer to kind of overbuy on your batteries. So your ESC is going to tell you what its amp draw is. And that's pretty much what you're going to want to be look at or what you're going to want to, what you're going to want to look at. So if you have an 80 amp ESC and you have, it's going to be a 5,000 milliamp hour battery, you're going to be better off buying a 30 C battery than a 20 C battery. Now the 20 C battery will technically work and it's not

[00:28:59] Going to give you any problems. You're not going to have anything happen, because of the, the current you're pulling out of it, but it's always good to have some headroom so that the battery kind of is not working at its, its full power, full capacity. Does that make sense? Yes. Any, yeah. Anytime you push something to the limits on what it's designed to do, you're going to be, hurting that more than if it's working at half power or something like that.

[00:29:25] So you're going to get more, you're going to get more charges out of it. You're going to get more, life out of this battery. If you take care of it and don't push it to its, it's, it's rated capacity for withdrawal. okay. Other thing that you're going to find on a label, most of them, I should say, not all of them. Cause I looked through all mine to see if these all had this, peak discharge C rating. So that's going to be like how many amps you can draw for short bursts, five to 10 seconds, something like that. So, with the same,

[00:29:56] Like 5,000 milliamp hour battery, let's say it's 20 C continuous 30 C burst. That means continuously you can pull out a hundred amps without issues. You can also, pull out 150 amp out of that battery for short bursts of five to 10 seconds without damaging the battery.

[00:30:16] So yeah, you'll, you'll see that in, in different batteries. like I said, not all of them are going to have the, the, the peak, C rating for peak discharge. Some of mine don't, some of mine do. So it's just look on the battery, but all of them for sure are going to tell you what the voltage is, or tell you the cell count. That's very important to know if it's a 2S or a 3S, 4S, 5S, 6S, whatever. Yeah. Especially if you have a charger that doesn't auto select the

[00:30:46] Cells. Right. Which detects it when you plug it in. Yeah. Which I don't. So I still have the old style where you have to tell it what you're charging. so it knows how to charge it. but the nice thing about lipo batteries, they don't have any memory. So it doesn't matter what you pull them down to. They will not, will not remember, what they, what they can take out of them. So you don't have to worry about the memory effect that you had to worry about with, NICADs or NIMH batteries. They also, one of the nice things is the, like I said before,

[00:31:21] The, the high discharge rates, you're not going to get those discharge rates out of the NICADs or NIMH. It's just not, the batteries aren't designed for that. So it's not going to happen. and the, the capacities, like I said, are just huge compared to some of these other batteries too.

[00:31:37] So you can, you get much bigger fuel tanks if you will, for your airplanes. Yeah. So the other thing that, that is nice about these batteries. So your, your usage in these batteries is in a narrow band of voltage. You have, like 4.2 volts is fully charged. So on a 3.7 cell, 4.2 volts is fully charged. You never want to go under three volts per cell. Right. I always like to stop at like

[00:32:09] 3.3, depending on what you, what you go to. I know like with RC cars, some of the ones I have, you can actually set the low voltage cutoff for 3.0, 3.1, 2, 3, 4, 3.5 volts.

[00:32:23] I always went to 3.3 on those with airplanes. It's a little bit different. I don't, I don't let the, the voltage cutoff do the work for me. I just set a timer. because most of the time with a timer, you're going to be safe, not draining it too far. and it's also going to not get to the point where, so what, what happens with airplanes is when you're flying around and you hit that low voltage cutoff, you lose power. So it will turn off your propeller. And that's how it

[00:32:55] Tells you that, Hey, it's time to come in and land. Yep. So you can reset that, you go down to, to idle and then you can slowly give it some power. But if you start pulling out too much again, it goes to the low voltage cutoff, it's going to happen again. So the best thing is,

[00:33:11] Just set a timer. Letting it go to the, to the low voltage cutoff kind of plays into what you were talking about, about operating at its maximum limits. That will kill them much faster. Right.

[00:33:24] But so what I was kind of getting at though, is what's nice is you have, between three to three and a half volts, all the way at 4.2 volts. So there's not a lot of difference in voltage between a fully charged battery and an empty battery. So you don't lose a lot of power when you're flying, you'll, you're going to lose some RPM because obviously the voltage is dropping a little bit, but it's not going to be a huge difference between the beginning of the

[00:33:46] Flight and the end of the flight. Oh, yep. Yeah. I see what you're talking about. The discharge curve,

[00:33:51] Right? Yeah. Sorry. So when it, like I said, fully charged 4.2 volts, fully empty three volts to three and a half if you're being safe. So you're not, you're not going to be running all that or running that down to like under a volt per cell to where you're going to notice a huge difference in power, and performance. So the nice thing about those is like I said, that the band is very small in what you take out. So you don't see a difference in, in performance between the beginning and the end of the flight, like you would with other batteries. Yeah. I remember with, with the

[00:34:24] NICADs and, and even the NIMHs with, with cars, I've used to be in the cars too, but, there would, there would be a definite gradual decline in performance from start to finish, with a, with a kind of a sudden, ramp off of voltage at the end of the charge. But, yeah, it's not, it's not like that with the lipos. It's very, very, a very flat, if you will, discharge curve, which is cool. Cause like you said, it's the same power from almost from start to finish.

[00:34:55] Yeah. When I used to run cars a lot more too, I mean, you'd be, you'd be racing down the straight away and you wouldn't really notice any difference. it's not like they slowed down a lot, but then all of a sudden you'd hit that low voltage cutoff and then that would just stop, which is fine.

[00:35:08] You're running the car, so it's not going to go anywhere. and then you can kind of baby it around and get it back to you. So you don't have to go out on the track to pick it up.

[00:35:15] But it's when I did have some of the NIMH batteries, also, yeah, you could definitely tell you get halfway through the battery and you'd be going a lot slower. You get to the end of that battery and it's just barely crawling around the track trying to come back to you. So, yeah, the, the lipos make a huge difference. Oh yeah. Yeah, they do. Only thing though with lipos is make sure, make sure you are running it on an ESC that is designed for lipos. Almost any of them nowadays are. I mean, I, I don't know if you can buy one that's not, that you're not able to

[00:35:51] Use lipos with, but with some of the older like tracks of stuff that I have and some of the after market parts for those, they were really before lipos. and so for me to run lipos in that, first off, you have to check your voltage to make sure it'll, it'll work. right. And you also need to put like a, an external, like alarm. You can get alarms to, to plug into the, the charger port or the, the balance lead on the lipos. And then it'll kind of start beeping if it gets to a

[00:36:22] Certain cutoff. so just make sure your, your ESC can handle a lipo, which like I said, anything today, I can't imagine that it wouldn't. So that's kind of a moot point. Did you want to talk about

[00:36:33] Lipos as receiver packs in airplanes and, and kind of some of the issues you might run into with that? Yeah. Take over. Go on. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, so you, you mentioned, the different voltage per cell. And so a standard, three cell lipo is 11.1 and a two cell lipo is 7.4.

[00:36:54] And so a single cell is 3.7. so most airplane, receivers are designed to operate around the six volt range. So a two cell lipo, unless your receiver is modern and designed to handle the high voltage and it'll say usually HV on it somewhere. we would have to run the lipos through some sort of a, oh gosh, I, a voltage regulator, a regulator. Thank you. which I still

[00:37:27] Have a bunch of those in the drawers here and stuff, but then even those are becoming less and less necessary because most of the radio manufacturers have kind of, accepted the reality of how good the lipos and the, and the other lithium style batteries are, and they've designed to operate, at those voltages. So you have to be careful about powering an aircraft radio, with lipos. You have to make sure that, if the radio is not designed to handle that voltage, you're using either a regulator or, well, I guess a regulator

[00:37:59] Or a smart tray with one built in. The other thing you have to watch out for though, not

[00:38:05] Only your, your receiver servos, some of those are not, if it's not a high voltage servo, they are not meant to take, the higher voltage with a, like a two S lipo.

[00:38:16] Sometimes, there was, there's, there's like a band of receivers out there that, would accept the high voltage from the battery and their output voltage was designed to handle standard analog and digital servos at six volts. So you have to do your reading and do your research when you buy a receiver, or if you have a receiver, get out there on Google and, find the specs and make sure that output voltage from the receiver, no matter what receiver battery you're using, matches up with the servos that you're using.

[00:38:44] Yeah. Good tip. Always check to make sure you're not going to burn them out. Cause that will, that will burn them out pretty quick. And, been there, done that they'll last just about long enough to get up and start flying and then you'll lose everything and crash. So.

[00:38:58] Well, I haven't, haven't lost one in flight due to that, but I've, I've lost several servos on the bench because I, I've neglected to check the output voltage of the receiver and whether it, was, would jive with the servos that I was using.

[00:39:11] Oh, yeah.

[00:39:13] Luckily I'm cheap and I, I buy cheap servos. So.

[00:39:17] Well, you don't want to mess up anything too expensive.

[00:39:19] Right. So now you, you, you talked about all these wonderful things with the lipos. Is there, you want to talk about any of the negative stuff?

[00:39:26] Oh, sure. Lipos are scary batteries.

[00:39:29] Well, they can be like when they first, when they first came on and first, became popular in the, in the RC, in the hobby, I was, I was very afraid of them. I didn't want them in the house. In fact, I kept them out in the garage, which with the heat in my garage was not a good idea either. But anyway.

[00:39:47] That was probably worse on them than keeping them in your house.

[00:39:50] Probably. but, it was, it was just, they were so new and they hadn't, I don't want to say they hadn't worked all the bugs out, but they hadn't really worked all the bugs out for, especially for, homeowners to use these things.

[00:40:04] Yeah. but, yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they really are safe. I mean, you've really almost with, with the chargers and all the stuff that's out there now, that are using these things. I mean, I don't want to say they're foolproof because it's still ways to mess them up. But, if you're, even just slightly careful, you're not going to have any issues with them.

[00:40:29] Right. I mean, treat them well, if they get, if they show signs of degradation, if they, if they get puffy at all, like my rule kind of is, if they get puffy, don't fly them. I've seen other people, like the person I'm talking to now that has, flown with, some lipo batteries that I would be questionable about, and would not use.

[00:40:56] And I have since, I have since gotten rid of those batteries.

[00:40:59] Yeah. So the, okay. So puffy, puffy, lipo, what causes that? I don't want to go in too deep on it. okay. Yeah. Cause I won't understand you anyway.

[00:41:13] Well, okay. So let's just, let's touch on the basics. So a battery has an anode, a cathode, an electrolyte or electrolyte. so with a lipo, the electrolyte is going to be your, your, like the, hence the PO, lipo, lithium polymer. It's a polymer separator that goes between the cathode and the anode. So what happens when it's either, well, age causes it

[00:41:46] Overcharging, charging too fast causes it. charging them to too high of a voltage causes it. Taking them below three volts causes it. Yeah. What about storing them at the wrong voltage? Storing them at the wrong voltage will speed it up. Okay. So that's kind of part of the aging thing. So with, with lipo batteries, you want to store them at a certain voltage. We'll get to that in a minute. any deviation from that is going to hasten the death of your battery. So,

[00:42:18] I like how you put that hasten the death of your battery. Just, just be careful. We'll make them live as long as we can, as long as we take care of them. But, so when you see the puffing that happens when that, that little separator, the polymer separator breaks down, so.

[00:42:38] Polymer is another word for plastic, right? Yeah.. More or less? Pretty much. Yeah. That,

[00:42:44] That's, that's the part that goes between and kind of separates, like I said, your anode and your cathode. So, most of what, is in that is going to be lithium and oxygen. So when that breaks down, that is the oxygen kind of coming out of that, electrolyte. So they're a lipo battery. I don't know if we've ever taken one apart. They are made up of a lot of

[00:43:14] Layers, that are very, very. I'll be honest. I'm still scared of them. So I, I don't mess with them. Like I don't take them apart. Like I get nervous even just soldering my, my connectors

[00:43:25] Onto them. so no, I've never had one apart. I, I have had to get rid of some before and before I got rid of my, I discharged them, all the way as low as I could go. And I did cut one open just to kind of see what it looked like. There's a lot of like fan folded, layers in there. I think it was a three cell. I don't remember if it was a four or 5,000 milliamp hour battery, but when you unfolded those battery, it was a, it was a big battery. It was one of the first ones I got for my, RC cars here. But anyway, when you, when you unfolded the,

[00:43:58] The stuff that was inside of that, it was five or six feet long. It was, it was a lot of stuff that's kind of pressed into that. so what, what happens, well, first off when it, when it puffs, it's starting or it's starting to get dangerous. the, the chemicals that are in there, the problem with them is when they do short out, they kind of fuel their own fire. And that's why it's so hard to put out like a lipo fire when that

[00:44:28] Happens. What, what comes out, of that puffiness is oxygen and oxygen obviously makes it easier to burn. So it's, it's supplying its own oxygen to the fire and that's what makes it hard. or that's what makes it difficult to, to put out sometimes. But so those layers, as they start to puff up the, they get more room between them. And in order for that battery to work well and to work at its full, full

[00:45:01] Extent that needs to be pressed as tightly as they can. When that puffs up, the ions can't go between the anode and the cathode. And you really lose, you lose the ability to take out the, the power as quickly as you need it. So if it's puffed too much, really those batteries are useless. you're not going to be able to get your flight times out of them. You're going to pull, or you're not gonna be able to pull the power out as fast as you can without harming the battery. like I said, discharging it too fast past

[00:45:36] Your C rating, charging it too fast over one C or whatever they, they rated that can do it. improper storage can do it and just time in general, because these batteries from the day you buy the battery, it's breaking down and it's kind of eating itself away. so these ticking, right. They don't last forever. and that's why, like I said, you get, one, two, three, maybe 500 cycles out of them if you really take care of them. but don't, don't count on

[00:46:07] Them lasting too long. So that's kind of the lipo puff and why it's a good thing to, when you see a little bit of a puff, you're probably fine. Just know you're probably going to be on your last season, but if it puffs up quite a bit, especially if it wasn't like that before you flew and you came back and you saw it was all puffed up, just it's done. set it off to the side, let it cool down, let it kind of sit on its own and just, don't touch it. then you'll have to kind of go through, you'll want to get it,

[00:46:38] Get it taken care of and recycled at a later date. But at that point, just kind of let it sit and see what it's going to do. That's, that's my recommendation at least. Don't touch it. Don't that's good advice. Yeah. That's when they get dangerous. like I said, when,

[00:46:50] So when, when the battery has puffed, has puffed to the point that it's round,

[00:47:00] So, so what you're saying is that's bad. Yeah. And some of the, some of the batteries that I've seen are bad. Yeah. like I said, some of the ones I have, if, if you press on them, you might get it to move down 16th of an inch or something like that. And you can kind of feel a little bit of puffiness to it, but those batteries are, I think one of them I have is, oh, I, I date my batteries when I get them. I think the one I'm talking about was, Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. I, I used to mark down how many times I charge it,

[00:47:32] But then I got lazy and didn't want to do that. but I think that one was 2015. So it's about five years old. and it's, it's probably to the point where I need to be getting rid of it.

[00:47:44] But so how that brings me to, I'll ask you when you're done, go ahead.

[00:47:51] Well, I lost my train of thought, so I'm done.

[00:47:54] Oh, well, you were talking about, you'd had it, five years or so, and it was probably time for it to, for you to be done with it and, and to get rid of it. and my, my question was going to be, how, like, what, how, how do we get rid of these things? I mean, these are, I've heard that these are

[00:48:09] Safe. We can just throw them in the landfill. Well, that depends on, on where you are. it's not necessarily a good idea to do that. just because, recycle them. There, there is material in these that can be reused. I think some of these, I don't remember what the lipos do or not, but some of them have cobalt in it. and those, that, that material can be recycled. batteries in general should be recycled, not just thrown away. But the way to make these

[00:48:44] Safe, from, so what I've done and I don't know, don't take my word on this. I, I haven't looked up, how to officially destroy these batteries. but what, what I've done in the past, two things. So I will hook up, drain it as much as you can just on your airplane, get it as low as you can get it voltage wise. then you can either like put a light bulb or, some sort of small charge. like if, if you're in the right, depending

[00:49:21] On what kind of, voltage you're, you're working on, you can use like, some led strip lights are 12 volts. Some of them are one and a half volts, some are three volts, just depending on what kind of light you have. But, use something like that in order to slowly, slowly pull a draw out of it. when it gets down low, what I have done before, is just put it in salt water and I'll make up a, a container and put a decent amount of salt in it,

[00:49:55] Get it warm. So it gets dissolved. then normally I like to go outside with it so that I'm not, inside my garage or, inside the house especially, but I will leave it outside for upwards of sometimes a month and a half, two months, just to make sure it's completely shorted out and there's no power left in there. that's what I did with the one I was talking about that I, that I took apart after it was out there for quite a while. I knew that,

[00:50:25] When you check it with a voltmeter and stuff, there was nothing in it. It showed nothing. so you're able to kind of be less scared of them because when the, when the power is out of them, there's nothing really that's going to happen. so once that's done, set them off to the side and find out what your local recycling, battery cycling place or something like that is and take them into there. okay. I mean, that's what I do.

[00:50:52] Deep discharging them down, down to 0.0 volts. That's, that's not enough discharge to set these things off. What do you mean? Well, it, the, the fire that, that these things can potentially cause that's, that's a, that's a chemical reaction. It doesn't really have anything to do

[00:51:11] With electricity, right? I see what you're saying. Well, what, and please, if I'm wrong, somebody correct me because I'm not an expert on this by any means. It's the pulling out fast that destroys it. So if you slowly discharge it, and that's what the saltwater does. It's a very slow discharge. I mean, like I said, it takes a long time to do. That is okay. And especially because you're not trying to save the battery. Like if you get down to where it's very low, you're not going to want to use that again. It's just going to give you issues. It's not going to

[00:51:42] Charge right. and that's when it can get dangerous. So as long as you, as long as you do it slowly from what I understand, you won't have any issues. And like I said, please somebody reach out if I'm, if I'm telling a lie, because if we're wrong on this, I will take this down and we will, we will correct what we said. but that's how I understand it. Yeah. I'm just scared of them.

[00:52:05] So like when they're, when they're done, I just cut the connector off and actually they're all the ones I was planning on getting rid of. They're sitting right over here on the, on a box in the basement. I needed to take them out, figure out what to do with them. Well, okay. so the other

[00:52:19] Thing, when you cut connectors off one wire at a time and make sure they don't touch. I know. So don't, I mean, don't just like take your scissors and go straight across them. Cause

[00:52:28] That's going to short them out. And I, and I will get, and I cut them at different lengths too. Yeah. Like I'll cut, I'll cut one wire and then I'll flip it over and cut the other wire really

[00:52:35] Short so that they don't touch. Yeah. That's, that's a good idea. That's how I do it. Yeah. yeah. So the, with lipos, like I said, just be careful and treat them well. yeah, do not over discharge them when you're flying. if they get below that three volts per cell, that's the kind of the magic number with them. you're really going to mess them up and they're going to get useless very quickly. So just take care of it and you

[00:53:02] Should be okay. Cool. and, and don't rely on the low voltage cutoff of your electronic

[00:53:11] Speed controller. Yeah. That's, that's kind of a last resort. You, you want it there to, to kind of be a, a just in case I need it thing, but you don't want to ever need it.

[00:53:23] So the best thing, like I said, set that timer, and don't necessarily go all the way down to 0% too. I mean, I don't like to discharge my batteries that low. yeah. Figure out what your capacities are, what you're going to be flying at. And like I said, I always cut off maybe 80% of the battery or so, sometimes even less because I'd rather fly a little bit less now and have that battery last longer than have that extra couple minutes of flight time now and have to replace it sooner. Yeah. Right. And, and to be honest, most, modern

[00:53:55] Electronic speed controllers, you can, you can actually adjust that low voltage cutoff too. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I mean, you'd have to, you'd have to look at your speed controller, but, but again, I, I like you, I, I set a timer on my transmitter and when it goes

[00:54:08] Off, I, I make for the runway. Yep. That's when it's time to come in and then, and then you can check it, you'll know how much, charge you're putting in. and that'll kind of tell you how much you took out obviously. And then you can adjust accordingly.

[00:54:23] So if you only took out 20% of your battery, double that timer and go ahead and fly a little bit longer, but don't get down to zero. I mean, I don't know if I have a 5,000 minute lamp hour battery, I don't want to be putting 5,000 minute lamp hours in it to it.

[00:54:37] When I, when I do it, I want it to be, I'm happy if it's, 4,000 something in that range. Yeah. just leave a little fuel in the tank, but I guess I'm the same way with cars, like real cars. When I drive, I don't like to get below like quarter tanks. That's when I'll stop. there's two people, the car says 50 miles left on the, on the dashboard, but I got to get gas or other people. It says zero. Well, that's fine. I know my car. I got another 20 miles in me. No, I, I don't like doing that at all. I'd rather not walk. You're describing my wife. Oh, plenty of time. Yeah. That's

[00:55:15] Not me. Yes. I've had to take, I've had to take gas to her a couple of times. I think

[00:55:19] I talk about this some other time. Yeah. I think I do that once. And then, after

[00:55:23] That she's on her own. Yeah. All right. So, so that's lipos. how about, do you want to talk about the A123s or, or life PO4s or lithium ions, whatever you want to call

[00:55:35] Them? Yeah. We can, we can talk about that one. those are the ones I like. Well, that's good because I don't know nearly as much about those because I've never dealt with them before. I know you have some for receiver packs. Is that right? I do. Yeah. So why don't you, why don't you tell us a little bit about them? What's the difference between

[00:55:52] That and the lipo? well, one's called lipo and one's not. I'll be honest, the, the, the science and the technology, I, I'm not, I'm not real keen on the differences.

[00:56:08] These are, these are made of a lithium iron phosphate combination. so, as far as the actual construction of the cell, yeah, I can't really talk about it cause I don't know that much. but I know they're round, kind of like what I'm used to with the old NiCAD and nickel metal hydride batteries. So they're familiar, but bigger

[00:56:26] Though, right? They can be. Yeah. Oh, can you get them in the, like the AA size?

[00:56:33] Very similar. Yep. Oh, I didn't know that. Yep. and, and the reason I, I really liked them is because they're, they're more closely related voltage wise to nickel metal hydride. So, usually a life battery, you can get away with, with a standard, six volt radio system, because they're only, 3.3 volts, when fully charged. and when they're fully discharged, you can get them down to, I think

[00:57:04] It's, 2.3 or 2.5, something like that. Anyway, they're, they're more closely related. So you don't have to have a lot of the, the fancy, well, it's not so fancy anymore cause it's fairly standard. But, back when these came out, the, the high voltage receivers and high voltage servos were fairly expensive because, and you had fairly limited selection of what you could get. so the life PO battery or the lithium iron batteries were nice because you didn't require anything different. You could just buy this new technology battery, which

[00:57:35] Was kind of the best of both worlds. It, it had the, the long life and the, the, the non self discharging features of, of the lipos, but you also had the somewhat durable nature of the, of the nickel metal hydride. so that's why I like them. And they're, they're easy to deal with. You don't have to balance charge them. You don't have to do any of that stuff. You can treat them as long as you're charging them with the correct charger. You can treat them almost like you would treat a NICAD or a nickel

[00:58:09] Metal hydride. they're, they're not really designed for high discharge rates, which is perfect for, receiver battery use. Yeah. Cause I, I, I don't run a lot of the high voltage, high amp draw digital servos in my airplanes, or I'll gain several, like on my big airplane. I have two analog servos that are fairly low draw to run a big aileron instead of one big high amperage, digital servo.

[00:58:40] So perfect for me that they're not high discharge, like the lipos. they do charge a little bit differently than the lipos. Like I said, you don't have to balance them. You don't have to really monitor, that each individual cell like you really should with a, with a lipo. but, but yeah, that's, I, I like them. they're, they're simple to use and they're pretty safe, comparatively speaking to a, to a lipo for sure. I'm not sure what the, what the lifespan is on them because honestly I have not worn one out yet.

[00:59:16] Yeah, yeah. They will, they will sit in an airplane all winter long. I shouldn't say that. They will sit on my bench all winter long. Technically I do, I do leave them in the airplane, but I shouldn't. Oh, but they're stored inside. Right. You're right. I don't keep them out in the garage or out in the shed or anything like that. Yeah. So, but I don't, I won't touch them all winter long. And then when I'm ready to go fly in the spring, I'll go to top them off and they'll take maybe, maybe a hundred, maybe 200 milliamps for them to get back to fully, fully charged. I mean,

[00:59:49] They really, really are, are ideal for, what I use them for, aircraft

[00:59:55] Receiver batteries. And what'd you say the, the voltage was on them? I think, I

[01:00:01] Think when they're fully charged, they, they go to 3.3 or 3.6. I, to be honest, I don't, well, wait a minute. I got a sheet right here. 3.6. yeah. So, per cell and then, never let them get below two and a half per cell. Oh, okay. So they

[01:00:27] Are a little bit different than lipo then just on their, on their voltages to them. Right. Okay. Then that makes sense. Like, so I've never used them. So that makes sense as to why you can kind of directly replace like a six cell, or a five cell, receiver pack. Yeah. Yeah. I love them. I really do. they're kind of pricey still. I haven't

[01:00:49] Really been able to, excuse me. I haven't really been able to find a, I don't want to say cheap, inexpensive, if you will. A value brand, if you will. Right. Right.

[01:01:02] So, so I just buy them from, Framico. I mean, that's a good, it's a quality brand. I'll say their name, the great customer service. I highly recommend them. But anyway, I can't find them really anywhere else for a much cheaper anyway. So I just go ahead and get them from there. And, I've, like I said, I, I've got, let's see, I've got three and my big yak here. I've got two on the bench. One of them is going to go on the Kristen Eagle.

[01:01:26] But I've had these batteries. God, I can't remember. I can't even remember when I bought them. I need to do like what you do and put dates on them. and in fact, I may do that

[01:01:35] On all these new lipos I just got, but. I actually think I might remember you talking about getting those. I mean, it's been several years, hasn't it? It's yeah, it's been at least. If that's the

[01:01:44] Same one I'm thinking of. It's, it's been at least five years, at least. Well, you, okay.

[01:01:51] So I think you bought those about the same time I bought the, the batteries for my yak. Cause in the, in my plane, in that big one, I put, the two cell lipos. Okay. Yeah. So it probably,

[01:02:02] Yeah. Cause you've got a board in that, in that airplane, right? Yep. So I, okay. Yeah. So yep. Yeah. That's exactly when it was. So how long ago has that been? I don't know. I don't

[01:02:11] Have those batteries in front of me to tell you the date on them. I mean, it may not be the exact date, but it'd be, it'd be pretty close. anyway, I want to say probably 15 or 16.

[01:02:22] So yeah, five, five or six years. Yeah. four or five or five or five. Yeah. Four or five years. and like I said, I, I pulled, I pulled them out of the yak. I mean, I pulled them out of the, out of the yak last fall, just last week, and, and topped them off. And literally one of them took like 120 milliamps to, to top off. And the other one, it was like about them. It was like 200. It was like just shy of 200, I think.

[01:02:50] And how big are those? these are, this one is, 4,800. Oh, okay. 4,800. Yeah. 4,800 milliamp pack. And it sat idle. I mean, last time I charged it would probably have been last summer, honestly, sometime. And it sat all that time and that's all it discharged.

[01:03:15] Yeah. That's not bad then. That's pretty impressive. You said those, you said when charging, they don't have like the balanced ports that a lipo does. So how do you charge those? Is there a special setting on a, on your charger?

[01:03:25] Yeah. So in fact, from, from Fromaco, the people that I, I buy these from, they, they, they're very, very good. they give you very, very specific instructions on how to charge them. and basically you charge them on your, on your lipo charger on the lithium polymer setting. Oh. Because I guess the voltage is close enough. And you charge them as a two cell in series. I'm sorry. Yes. Two cell in series or a 7.4 volt. That's how you charge them.

[01:03:52] Even though they're not, they're not a lipo and it's using that.

[01:03:57] So they're going for voltage then. Right. Yeah. So. And then just at one C, like what amp do you do those with?

[01:04:05] One C. It says do not exceed one C. Okay. So 4.8 amps.

[01:04:09] I charge, yeah, I charge, I charge them at an amp. I mean, I, I kind of, I kind of undershoot a lot of these C ratings on the charge just because I, like, I'm cheap. I want to, I want my batteries to last as long as I can possibly, make them. And if charging at one C as opposed to three C or, or, or I'm sorry, charging one amp as opposed to charging at 4.8 amps makes the battery last another season, I'm not in that big a hurry.

[01:04:38] I don't need the battery charge that fast. So one C is plenty for me. So I, or I'm sorry, one amp, I should say, I keep saying one C. so I just charge them at one amp. And to be honest, these little JST connectors, the little connectors that plug into your radio with these small wire, anything more than like an amp and a half or two amps, the wire gets kind of warm anyway. And that kind of frightens me. So I just charge them at an

[01:05:03] Amp, play it safe. Yeah. Well, I think the JSTs are supposed to be like five amps is what they'll handle, but I've seen, I've seen some of these little wires get pretty warm at an amp and a half. Well, like I'm talking about the actual connector, not necessarily the wires. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm talking about the wire. Oh, okay. Huh? Well, okay.

[01:05:25] So yeah, I love them. I guess since we kind of got to charging, let's, let's move on to that really quick. okay. So NICADs charge pretty easy. There's no, nothing special to do with those, nickel metal hydride, same thing, charge pretty easy, nothing special.

[01:05:44] The one thing. Just make sure you have that Delta peak detection set to be really sensitive

[01:05:49] For the nickel metal hydride. Right. And so I would say most, if not all, modern chargers, have selectable battery types. Like I know on mine, I can do like lead batteries. I can do the nickel cadmium batteries. I can do the, NIMH. I can do the lipos.

[01:06:08] I think that's all I have on mine. That's the only ones I've ever used on it. that I remember saying at least. So when you charge a lipo though, so that's going to be completely different than any other battery really, that we've dealt with. So yes, the long story short of it, lipos have a balance lead. So what that does is actually hooks up wires to each and every cell individually that's in, in your battery. So if you have a three S

[01:06:38] Lipo, you're going to have four wires coming off of that balance lead. One's ground and then one's positive for each of the three cells. When you first charge, your lipo, you're going to set your, your charge rate, like your amperage. And then you're going to tell it what kind of, what size lipo battery you have like two S three S, unless it's smart enough to know on its own. Like I said, mine isn't, you have to tell it what you're charging.

[01:07:07] So then it's going to, then it's going to go ahead and check and make sure that pretty much what you're, or what you're telling it is there is there. So we'll check and make sure there's voltage on all of the, all of the, the balance leads. And then it's going to start charging. So your high rate of charge, like if you're charging a 5,000 milliamp hour battery at five amps, your high rate of charge is going to actually start charging through, the main connection to the battery. When you get to the end, let me back up just a little bit. So when you're charging, there's two different

[01:07:40] Charging, profiles for lipos on mine. You can either charge one or you can balance charge it. always balance charge it is what I will tell you the reason for that. So when you're charging your battery, you're going to really quickly try and get that battery charged. What happens if you don't balance it, when you get to 4.2 volts on a cell for your lipo battery, that's fully charged. You don't want to put anything else in there.

[01:08:09] If you do, you're going to start to kill that, that cell and it's going to die off really quick. When you're charging three cell lipos at, your 11.1 volts or 12.6 when it's fully charged, when it gets to that 12.6 volts, it doesn't know what each cell is doing. So if one is at, right, it's just registering the pack vault, right? It's just overall you're at 12.6 volts. So one might be 4.2, one might be four volts and one might be 4.4 volts. If

[01:08:41] That one is over, it's your battery is going to be pretty much shot. So what happens is when you balance these things, when it gets towards the end, it will start to charge each one of those cells separately. And then that way it knows that each cell is going to be at 4.2 volts and it will charge them, on its own. So when one gets to the point where it's fully charged, it stops charging and then it will charge the next one. until it's fully charged. So it'll, it'll do them all at once. But when you get to the point to where each one is done and at 4.2 volts, then your battery is fully charged.

[01:09:17] That is the best way to charge a lipo battery without killing it. Like I said, whenever I charge them, I do one C. So I'll do that at most one C, even if it can do more. So like I said, five amps, for a 5,000 milliamp hour battery. And then when you get to the end, it's going to take a lot longer to charge. So you're going to see that really go up and take the, take its charge quickly. And then as it gets to the end, it's going to slow down a lot as it's balancing because instead of that five amps, it's only putting like an amp or less

[01:09:47] Or so, I think into each one of those cells, just kind of bringing it up to its full charge voltage. So just be careful when you're doing that. that's how really you're going to make your, your batteries last longer. So that's the best way to do it. you can also, you mentioned before, take your charger to, to the field with you. I like doing that too, especially when you're flying a bunch of, electric, airplanes. I have a four port charger that I bring with me. so that will hook up to your car battery and then you can

[01:10:20] Charge four separate batteries at once and, independent of each other, which is nice. yeah, only problem with that. And I want to warn people on this because I've done it. If you're at the field for a long time, charging a bunch of batteries, your car battery is going to die. And then you're going to have to ask somebody for a jump. I, I've kind of gotten into the habit, when I've gone places like towards the end of the year last year of bringing an extra like deep cycle battery with me and then just using that

[01:10:50] To charge. the chargers have a low voltage cutoff. So when it gets too low to safely charge your batteries, it's not going to, it's not going to charge or, it's going to shut itself off. So you're not charging batteries and then you don't have to worry about having a dead car battery. So always use a different battery is, is my recommendation because I've been there to where I've had to get a jump. I've also been there to where I was the only person there and had to call somebody to come give me a jump because yeah, I've done it twice. Once with somebody else there with me and then

[01:11:22] Once by myself. and that's not fun. I like nitro. That is true. But you, yeah.

[01:11:31] Okay. You got me. That's true. No, I mean, I've, I've, I've never, I've never, ran my car battery down, but, I mean, I can see how that, how that could happen, especially if you're flying, flying a lot and you've got a lot of batteries. Yeah. Actually when I,

[01:11:48] When we used to run cars here quite a bit, I took one of our, our older, kind of crappier golf carts and made a power panel on that to where I could actually charge all of the batteries and stuff straight off the golf cart. And then, that the batteries in there are quite a bit bigger. yeah. And the nice thing about that is I didn't have to worry about having a car out in the field with me or anything like that. And I've also done that now with airplanes, since I don't do the cars as much, I'll, I'll take that out with, airplane batteries and stuff and just kind of camp out in the field and go through a bunch of batteries and spend a couple hours out

[01:12:21] There at a time. So that's fun too. Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Yep. okay. So I just wanted to,

[01:12:29] So the algorithm that the chargers use for, I mean, I understand how it works with, with, NICAS and nickel monohydrates. What's the difference between, if you, if tell me, and if you don't, that's fine. it's not that big a deal, but is the algorithm different because, there's constant current, constant voltage, and then there's, variable current, with, with constant, I mean, there's all these different charge algorithms. I mean, is it, is it really that different between the two styles of

[01:13:05] Battery? Yeah. So with that, I don't know. Okay. Because I know with, I have no idea. With NICADs, I mean, you talked about, you touched on it just a, just a little bit ago about how, the peak voltage for, let's say, a two cell lipo is what? 8.4. I think that's where it cut off. Yeah. It keeps it. 4.2 times two. Just, just while watching, watching my charger while I'd be charging one of these batteries.

[01:13:35] The, like you said, the voltage, the, the pack voltage would get, get up to 8.4 or whatever that top is very quickly. And then it would just stop there and then it would adjust the charge current to keep it at 8.4. So I'm, I guess what I'm asking is, is the cutoff, when, when does it actually cut off the, the charge current? Like when, when it takes a 10th of a volt to keep it at 8.4?

[01:14:00] Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. I, I, I'm asking. Yeah, I do. I've noticed that before too. Yeah. Like when I'm charging batteries, like it'll start at that five amps and then yeah, it, it turns itself off and somehow it knows based on voltage drop, pretty much how full it is. I see. I don't know how it works. I'm not a, an electrical engineer

[01:14:21] Or anything. Me either. But yeah. I mean, I, I know how they work with NICADs and Nucle Metal Hydrides. I just didn't know how it, I guess I just didn't care enough and was scared to find out, I guess, because lipo's still, still frighten me. I mean, I still get nervous even just having them in the house sometimes when I think about, especially this new battery I just bought, it's, it's like the biggest lipo I've ever owned. And it just looking at it, I'm intimidated by it. Yeah. That's a little bigger than anything

[01:14:49] I've had too. but really it's the same as your smaller ones. just treat it well and it should, it should be fine. If you see it start to get puffy, don't use it. well,

[01:15:00] Hopefully it doesn't do that for a while cause it wasn't, I mean, relatively speaking, it

[01:15:04] Wasn't a cheap battery. And you should get a lot of uses out of it as long as you take

[01:15:09] Care of it. Right. Well, no, I'll take your advice, and, I'll not over discharge it or discharge it, overcharge it. I guess I should say also. Yeah. What, like what connectors do you use on those? Yeah. So I use Dean's two pin or Dean's ultra plugs on pretty much everything that's not a JST connector. So, and the reason is because, and, and I'm set in my ways. I used these style of connectors way back when I used to race RC

[01:15:42] Cars. and they're, they're, I don't know what they're actually, I think they're capable of like 120 amps or 150 amps or they're capable of quite a bit of current. And I have, I have never knock on wood. I've never gotten one so hot that I've, knocked a solder

[01:16:00] Joint or anything off of them. So is that like a bigger version of Dean's then or? No, the

[01:16:05] Dean's ultra plug is so Dean's like over the years, I'll just give you a quick brief history.

[01:16:10] So Dean's has been making plugs for a very, very long WS Dean's. That's the name of the company making plugs for a really long time. And they actually started their business making, connectors for radios like servo connectors and things like that. They were little three pin and they made these little tiny little two pin connectors and, they're red and you could get them in black too. And, they're just very high quality. The pins are all gold plated. so, good for, for, conductivity. and then they made these,

[01:16:42] I forget it. I think it was in the early nineties. they, they may produce a plug called the ultra plug. And it was just a, it was just a heavier duty version of their two pin plug that they were making at the time. And they're arranged such that one pin is arranged one way. And then the other pin is arranged 90 degrees to that. So it's impossible to plug them in backwards. Now it's not impossible to solder them backwards. Yeah. but when you have them all soldered correctly and they're cool because on the backside of the plug, they have a plus and a minus. So you can be

[01:17:15] Consistent about your, your setup. but anyway, I've, I've used them ever since, I've done cars and, I know there's better connectors on the market now, probably. And certainly there's cheaper connectors on the market, but, I like these, Hobby King even sells a version of it. I think it's called the XT something or other. and they're compatible with the Dean's plug. So,

[01:17:40] That's what I use. Hmm. Well, I guess I don't know about the, Dean's ultra plug is what you

[01:17:47] Said it was. I'll have to look that up. That's what, that's what Dean's called them. They, they called them their ultra plug, but it's the same connector. You've seen them. I mean, they've, they've been on all my

[01:17:56] Batteries since you've known me. Well, but okay. So I, what confuses me, so a regular Dean's plug that I know is 50 amps. So is there a difference between a Dean's plug and a Dean's ultra plug?

[01:18:12] Hmm. well, I don't think so. I think you and I are talking about the same plug, but I thought they were capable of much more than that. I could be wrong, but no. So if, if, if we're talking about

[01:18:21] The same thing, the little red ones, cause I have some of those too, that's, that's 50 amp.

[01:18:27] Oh, okay. And it's funny you like that because I don't like those. my reason for not liking them is I, when you solder them, you have to be very careful. What, what I found is that the best thing to do when you're soldering them is to have a heat sink on the other side, to kind of take some of that heat away because it, the, the red plastic melts just a little bit if it gets too hot.

[01:18:50] And then they are very difficult to plug in and unplug to the other ones. you need a

[01:18:56] Hotter iron then. Cause I, I have zero problems with that when I'm soldering them. Oh really?

[01:19:02] Well, I've had problems with that before, but the ones I've used, pretty much on just about everything now, are the XT sixties. And those are, 60 amps. What I like most about those, especially compared to Dean's, they plug in and unplug very easily.

[01:19:21] It's, it's the same thing to where you can't get it backwards, when you're plugging them in, obviously watch, there's plus and minus on it when you're, when you're putting it together, or when you're soldering it up. But it also, it has the, the round connector inside, like the bullet style. and it just makes it so much easier to solder. You're not trying to solder onto a little flat piece of, of metal like you are on the Dean's. so that's, that's probably my favorite one. they, they do make like the XT 90, that's going to be a little bit bigger

[01:19:52] And that'll handle, as the name suggests, 90 amps. but yeah, the, the XT sixties are what I use. I had some yellow ones, right? Yeah. Those are the yellow ones. I had some of the, the, the blue ones, the, what's it called? The EC threes, from E flight. Yeah. you can, that not just on them. you can get those on, on other things too. I think one of the, the cars I had a lot, a long time ago, I had those on it, man. I don't like those very much.

[01:20:23] I know I'm sure, I'm sure some people, really do. They don't seem to come apart, as easy and together as like the XT sixties. The thing that is nice about them though, is that you solder them when they're not in the plastic. So you assemble that afterwards, you, you solder your, bullet connector and then you push it into the plastic piece and it clips in. right. So that's kind of nice. with the Deans and with the

[01:20:53] XT sixties, you have to use the, the shrink tubing behind it just to make sure you don't get a short.

[01:20:59] So always use the shrink tubing on those. I'm trying to think what are some of the other ones. There's, Oh, I had some, I think I had one battery in a, an airplane and I ended up changing it out, but it was, HXT, I think is what they're called. It was like a four, four millimeter bullet connection. that's kind of the same thing when you assemble those is the EC threes. I just, but I, to me they're, they're hard to plug and unplug. I don't like those

[01:21:32] Very much either. And they're really long. so it takes up a lot more space. Oh, I know. Yeah.

[01:21:36] I know the ones you're talking about. They're red, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like those

[01:21:41] Either. They are really long. Yeah. but yeah, I mean, other than that, like your, your balance connector, I think those are the, what are they called? The JST dash X H, I think.

[01:21:53] Yeah. I think, yeah. I think there's three different styles of those JSTs, but yeah, that's,

[01:21:58] But yeah, that's the most common one that I, if I remember right. and I think those are only a couple of amps. You can't put a lot of power through them. So, yeah, that's why I, like I said, my, my favorite ones are the XT sixties. Pretty much everything I have is either XT 60 or Dean's. yeah, I think I've switched everything else out that wasn't that to be that. And it's nice to do it that way too, because then you don't have a whole bunch of different, charging leads for your chargers. you can just have a single one. And that's, yeah. And that, and that's

[01:22:30] Probably why I still use the Dean's because all of my chart, like everything I have is, is these Dean's. And I mean, even if I, even if I wanted to change to an XT 60 or 90, I'd have to buy that for everything I own. And it's just, I don't know, just easier to keep using what I have.

[01:22:49] Yeah, it is. I mean, as long as they're not giving you problems, there's no need to,

[01:22:52] To reinvent the wheel. So, no. And you mentioned about, when you, I mean, I don't want to get into soldering techniques or anything like that, but you, you talked about using a heat sink and really when you're soldering connectors onto a battery, on a lipo battery, especially you should be using, a wet, a wet paper towel or a rag or something on those wires away from that solder joint anyway, because you don't want any of that heat getting into the cells of the

[01:23:16] Battery. Yeah, that's a good point. So what, when you solder, what do you set your iron at?

[01:23:21] As hot as it'll go. I'm using a, it's an old HAKO, H-A-K-O, I think. And I believe it is a 120 watt, I think. I'd have to get the box out. But anyway, I set it to the max, because I don't want, like, and I don't use flux either. I use a good quality solder that I get from same company, WS Deans, same people who make my plugs or make the plugs that I use.

[01:23:54] And I'll, I'll pretend, if you will, I'll get some solder on the tabs of the connector first. Yeah. Before I go and try to, because that is a lot easier to get that soft and sticky, if you will, than it is to get the gold on the connector. But anyway, I don't want to be on that tab very long at all with the iron, because I don't, I don't want to melt the plug like, the problems you say you've ran into. So a good, good, good quality hot, like a

[01:24:25] Really, really, really hot iron with a big fat tip that will transfer as much heat quickly as, and rapidly as you can, is better than, an iron with a smaller tip that maybe you have to sit there on the tab and wait for everything to get hot, because then you're going to run the risk of, getting heat down the wire into the battery or melting the plug.

[01:24:47] Yeah. I just, hotter is better. Yeah. I think I set mine like 800 degrees, if I remember, that's what it does, because I do the same thing. I just turn it all the way up when I'm soldering these things. Yeah. And then I use one of those little helping hands things, the thing that has a couple alligator clips, and man, that makes it so much easier.

[01:25:05] Yeah. I've got a cool little tool here that I used to use in the RC car business. It's an aluminum block that actually, oops, sorry, actually clamps the connector into it. So then you have another free hand to, to manipulate the wire and hold it still. And you still have to use fingers. And that's probably why I don't have any nerve endings left in the tips of my first three fingers on both hands. But anyway, that's the setup I use.

[01:25:36] At least it's not your thumb that you use for flying. True. I would adapt. I would adapt and overcome. Maybe. Maybe you'd go with the pinch instead of the thumb thing.

[01:25:47] I'll say it again. I really wish I had learned to fly that way. I really do. But I've tried it and it's just so weird to me. I can't, I'm just a thumb kind of a guy. I have no precision.

[01:26:00] Yeah. I guess I lucked out into the fact that when I started, I don't remember who it was, but somebody told me the pinch. I mean, they didn't actually tell me, but when they showed me how to hold it, that's how they showed me. And that's just kind of how I've taken off since then. And I've taken off. That's kind of how I've done it since then.

[01:26:16] I see what you did there.

[01:26:17] Yeah. That was not on purpose. It's getting late, actually. I think it's probably about time to end this one. It's a lot longer, a lot longer than I planned on. So anything else you want to add, or are we just going to call it quits?

[01:26:31] No, I don't. I think you hit all the high points.

[01:26:35] All right. Well, in that case, goodbye. I'm Ron. And I'm John. See you later.

[01:26:41] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab Podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.