Searching for decent 3S 1800mAh

[crayfellow]

hey all,

I'm using a 250 to learn to fly [insane, I know] and it has been a blast.

Initially I bought a pair of Lumenier 3S 1800mAh batts. As you can imagine, I've had some serious crashes. One of the batts is already out of commission since showing damage. The other has torn cover plastic but no cell damage or wrinkling I can see. LiPo's always look a bit wrinkly to me... Anyway, flight time has gone down drastically despite careful 1C balance charging. It's less than 5 minutes before one of the cells goes below 3.8V (monitored via Taranis telemetry). I'm sure I was flying at least 10-15 minutes before.

This is all so much fun that we're out flying pretty much every day, so in 3 weeks or so it's gotten a lot of use, but I wouldn't have expected such a decline in performance this quickly.

Assuming the decline was caused by damage, are there any batteries better equipped for use in mini quads? For our RC short course trucks we have hard case 2S's, something like that seems like it would take a lot more abuse.

Now that I'm no longer crashing regularly maybe I'll have better luck with a new set. The Lumeniers are not in stock anyway so I'll poke around for something else. Any suggestions? This is a learning rig so I don't mind some weight in exchange for flight time, that is why I didn't go for a bunch of 1300mAh.

Cheers!

 

[Motopreserve]

The nano-tech at Hobby King have always worked well for me. Cheap and effective. Might be a bit heavier, not sure about that.

Worth a look.

 

[JoeBob]

Get one of the $3 battery alarms to see if your cells are fully charging.

I would weigh your rig and get someone to use eCalc to learn what flight time you should be expecting. 5 minutes from 1800 mAh is not that bad. The 1800 mAh batteries are small for racing, where weight is a premium, and most races are over inside of 5 minutes.

It may be that as you have grown more confident flying that time passes more slowly. 5 minutes of "Tree! Power-line! Wall! Too high! Ground! Me!!!" can seem like a long time.

 

[crayfellow]

yeah - and I'm probably way off in my time estimations. It was probably something more like 5-7min originally and now down to 1-3 before I get a cell voltage warning on my tx.

You're right, I was not analytical with this rig. Who knows, a lighter 1300mAh is probably equivalent and that is why everyone runs 'em!

and yes - my perception of time has DEFINITELY changed! Add "my kids!!" to your list and those were intense flights the first few times!

thanks guys.