Battery full charge vs storage

[Bison52]

Can somebody tell me how long its reasonable to keep a lipo fully charged. I keep a flight log and I really like logging the battery and the mAh put back in on every flight.

Of course, for that to mean anything, I have to fully recharge the battery. All well and good but depending on weather and time it might be anywhere from a day to a week or more before that battery is reused.

So to be safe, I guess I'd have to charge the battery, record them mAh usage and then discharge it to storage unless I know I'm going to use it in a day or so. Seems like a waste of time and that can't be good for the battery either.

So what do some of you guys do?

 

[olof]

Can somebody tell me how long its reasonable to keep a lipo fully charged. I keep a flight log and I really like logging the battery and the mAh put back in on every flight.

Of course, for that to mean anything, I have to fully recharge the battery. All well and good but depending on weather and time it might be anywhere from a day to a week or more before that battery is reused.

So to be safe, I guess I'd have to charge the battery, record them mAh usage and then discharge it to storage unless I know I'm going to use it in a day or so. Seems like a waste of time and that can't be good for the battery either.

So what do some of you guys do?

There are lots of writeups about this. And if you are super vigilant you can extend the life of your lipos.

But lets be practical. What I do is keep batteries between 40-75% after flying, if lipos have more or less charge after the days flying I run them through my chargers store/balance mode.

I try not to have my lipos charged for more than a few hrs. So I usually charge a few hours before flying or right before, sometimes on the drive to the location. I have a marine battery in my truck just for charging in the field. I know lots of guys that use portable generators for charging in the field.

The other thing I try to do for my lipos is to keep them as cool as possible, not frozen but not in a hot car in the sun. I store them in my garage in the summer it stays in the 60's ℉ there most of the summer. In the winter I keep them in the house also in the 60's ℉.

Bottom line a few hrs fully charged not ideal but realistic. Never leave fully charged for days. The payback is longer lasting lipos with less likelihood of a catastrophic in flight problem.

PS I hate the way my spell checker keeps fixing lipos to lips!

 

[mbsteed]

Ditto for what olof said.

I bought 6 nonotechs (6000) a year or so ago. I was careful not to abuse those by going deep into those in flight (I use multiple forms of Voltage alarms). However, it is windy in my part of the country - we get hurricane strength winds on a regular basis and such conditions can last for a week or more. ...so there was a couple of times this Fall when I left those fully charged for a couple of weeks ...or more before flying them or discharging those. I took those out a while back to find that I no longer could get the 7 minutes of flight time I was used to - I was down to anywhere between 2-4 minutes. Those batteries are toast. I have tried numerous times to slowly charge and discharge those and it has brought back a bit of charge (maybe to 4 minutes of flight time) but those are pretty much gone. I have ordered new batteries and will monitor those much more carefully. I am now diligent about putting the batteries into storage mode if for some reason I am not going to fly ...or am done flying.

 

[matwelli]

just log which pack you used, and the mah to get to storage value, then later when you fully charge the battery, add that figure to the log