The following good news came at a good time today. It is part of my attempt to offset the terrible negitive CL Karma created by the thoroughly discouraging, and mean spirited thread on the open forum. I feel I need to escape to the forward thinking, open minded, kind hearted, positive ion people here in the ECL area before I run away from CL screaming with a strange desire to click my heals together! 

I had a long talk with my friends at the TP booth at the AMA EXPO today. Here are some of the highlights:

NEW BATTERIES FROM THUNDER POWER

Many of us use the excellent batteries from Thunder Power and Hyperion. In ECL we only need a 20C rated battery so the TP Pro Lite series has been perfect for our ECL use, they are the lightest batteries available and now their price is very reasonable after their drastic price cut last year.

Now these batteries are even better. The latest version is the G4 Pro Lite V2 20C. It can be safely charged at a 4C rate (a 4,000 mAh can be charged at a 16 amp rate) This means that we can have our batteries charged in around 15 minutes! These new models also offer more cycles. They are now getting around 300+ cycles with these new batteries. For those of you who are really in a hurry all the time, and will pay any price to save some TIME, TP has a new battery that can be charged at 12C! Yes, that is not a typo:  12C. That means a charge time of around 5 to 6 minutes!!! BUT, this is a 45C battery and costs almost twice as much, and is heavier. Both of these batteries require a very good "balancing" charger with at least 250 Watts of charging power.

BTW: They, and their web site states: "DO NOT USE ANY TUNIGY CHARGER AT HIGHER THAN A 1C CHARGING RATE, it is unsafe to do so"! This leads us to the subject below.

NEW TP CHARGER

This is the charger we all have been waiting for. The NEW TP820CD. It is a dual port, 800 Watts total, 20 amps for each port, full feature balancing charger. It is the charger you need if you want to use the new high charge rate batteries to their fullest. We can now safely balance charge two 4S or 5S 4 amp ECL batteries at the same time, in just 15 minutes! The price for all this is only $269 (less at the EXPO). This will also need a very powerful, 40+ AMP 12V power supply. They have one available for only $200, I think it's output is measured in KiloWatts and they were using it to power the nearby Ontario Air Port ILS system!  It was BIG, and it will run many chargers at once.

BTW, the 1st shipment of the new charger was sold out before they arrived from the mfg. The second shipment, set to arrive early Feb, is already 90% sold out. So if you want one, you may want to call your LHS ASAP to order one. 

More details with photos in the next PAMPA SN E-Stunt column. 

I hope this 2nd bit of good news helps move the CL Karma account in a "much needed" positive direction?

Regards, 

All sounds terrific - 15 minutes? takes me that long to wipe off the latent electrons between flights!  

The new PLUS packs from Arrowind are also touting 5C charge & 300 cycles - that's longer than the expected life betwen ring jobs on a ST-46! 

WILL - definietly interested in info on those power supplies



The times truly are a-changing!

William,

I look forward to pictures of your rig.

This electricity is scary.  Has anybody written up the precautions we should take in putting together battery and charger systems?  I could imagine monitor circuits, idiot-proof connectors, fuses, arc-fault circuit breakers, and that sort of thing (not that I don't have five gallons of nitro in my fuel shed).

William,

I saw your handy work with the power supply's at Bob's a few months ago and I am definitely interested in building at least the smaller system. My question to you is at the field, can the charger your using support the 3-5C charge on a pack.

If you remember we have a charging station at our field running off of 6 large deep cycle Marine batteries hooked to solar panels to recharge the batteries. It is great that we can charge that fast at home with a power supply, but when I may not have access to that many AMPS at our field, can I still get that 15 minute charge rate?? (PS: I need to see how many amps we do have available, not sure)

Tim

Hi Tim,

We have a similar setup at our field. None of us have ever had any problems. We sometimes have over 10 chargers working at the same time. Your 6 Marine batteries hooked up in parallel should have more than enough amps to handle even the new dual port chargers at the 4C+ rate. At the risk of sounding like a real "tree hugger", I think it is so cool that we are actually flying with PV solar power! 

Thanks for the info Rudy, I am thinking about purchasing one of the I-chargers as well. William demonstrated them at Bob's place a couple of months ago.

I can not take credit for our Clubs charging station, our president is a very progressive electric RC flyer so the whole club benefits from his love of gadgetry. I was actually not in favor of the station at first because there were not many in the club flying RC electric stuff any more... but two years forward, I am really glad he did not listen to the naysayers.

It has been a great addition to our field.

I'm worried about doing something stupid and shorting out some high-amp doodad.  The sparks I got from cutting the wire to the lights when snipping a limb off the Christmas tree yesterday weren't a big deal, but got me thinking about electricity.  Then I saw Rudy's mention of King Kong amperes.  I don't think I can be trusted without building in some protections.  

Go CHARGERS! ..

Is this some football thing, or just your continuing cheerleading for electric stuff?

Is this some football thing, or just your continuing cheerleading for electric stuff?

Hi Howard,

Good one. ..... I wish I could tell you that it was a plan, but I never even thought of that angle when I wrote it, but I should have. I was just lamenting the fact that my SD Chargers were on vacation this year.    ..... BTW: congratulations on your Seahawaks amazing upset! 

Hi Bill,

My pleasure. I'm glad you brought up this important subject of costs. I should have been more clear in my post. This "high ZOOT" equipment is NOT needed to fly CL using E power. I was only pointing out what is available for those that really (emotionally) NEED to have their batteries charged in the shortest possible time, and get pleasure from "high Zoot" stuff, and have a need to be on the "bleeding" edge of technology! It's kind of like paying extra for the "Gold" edition of the Saito 4 Stroke engines. It is not needed, but some just have to have it. ;-) With that said, for a top CLPA competitor who is flying 8 flights at each practice, and flies a few times+ every week, then this dual port charger is actually very cost effective because chargers are less expensive than extra batteries if you put in a lot of flights each flying session and you don't have the time to wait a few extra minutes. But for the vast majority of CL pilots they do not need this feature.

All most people really NEED is the iCharger and one of the very good $20 power supplies that William showed us in his photos. Total cost for both = $100. This setup will allow you to charge your batteries in 30 minutes, and that is more than fast enough. And this setup will last a long time. I have LiPo-Ion chargers that have made many hundreds of charges and are now 8 years old, and still going strong.

In my humble and very biased opinion: The day will come when CLPA will be dominated by E power, then those that have not yet sold their wet engines will find that the price for them will be very very low. This has already happened in the RC world, and my guess is that it is beginning to happen in the CL world too.

Thanks again for pointing this out. I always try to keep in mind that there is a wide spectrum of flyers out there reading these posts. And I need to make sure that I clarify what is really needed, as apposed to what is "nice to have", but not really necessary. I am a big fan of buying quality equipment as it is more reliable and usually more cost effective over the long run. But this is different from buying the bigger unit with more bells and whistles that are not really needed by everyone(like the new TP charger), or the unit that is more convenient but is not more quality.

Regards,

Bill,
Rudy said it very well. The reason I suggested those power supplies is because they are as good or better than any other ones out there for a fraction of the cost!!!! If bought new those supplies probably cost between $300-400. We just get to take advantage of another industry's surplus or outdated stuff, that happens to work for us.Even if you use a totally budget charger and go buy a budget powersupply to run it you will pay at least $20 for the budget supply after shipping in most cases. These will run the budget chargers as well as the highest of the high end chargers just as good. Why would anyone buy something else? Most of us flying ECL can solder!!! Most of us can build our own models and know how to read instructions(I hope). As far as the chargers go, I see "High end"(whatever that is,since it varies according to the individual) chargers (hyperion duo,cellpro 10, i chargers, shulze) for sale in the "for sale" sections of the RC forums all the time.This is usually at a fraction of their original cost. The chargers,batteries,speedcontrols,motors and even allot of the props we use were originally developed first for RC use. They had it first. There is a wealth of knowledge on those forums if we dare go there. Their "rejects" can save us a ton of money!!!!! I would never buy a Castle speed controller "new" any more. Just in the last 6 months, I've picked up an new ICE 50 for$50,new Phoenix35 for $35, and a lightly used Phoenix 45 for $40. The deals on good stuff are out there if you know where to look and are patient. I will almost guaranty you that you will not even find this stuff for sale yet on controline boards!!!
Rudy and Russel, I think many of us have already waited too long to sell our wet stuff. I couldn't sell one motor at the last swap meet i attended and i don't believe anything I have was overpriced. I even had some NIB stuff!!

Bill,
Originally I wasn't going to put the stuff I sent Aaron out here. But one this thread started I felt I had no choice. I very much believe the the printed cost for some of this stuff is outrageous and people that don't do their research can end up paying way more than they should for this stuff. My goal from the beginning has been to show that with a little research one can buy good ECL stuff at better prices than most people think. There are things that I feel shouldn't be compromised on. Sometimes more money needs to be spent up front to save money in the long run. I've used the lowest of the low end stuff, all the way to the shulzie Plett stuff.I have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't. I will say that even the low stuff works better than my glow stuff ever did and my glow stuff worked great!!! I already learned the hard way with some of this stuff. I also don't like to spend one penny more than I have to anymore. Done right this is cheeper than glow!!

Hi Andy,

Did you get a chance to see Willam's excellent post #9 below? With your electronic skills it should be very easy for you to safely build one from a Computer PS. Several of my ERC buddies have built these and they work great. Like William said, you can make a real powerful one for low $. They are a little bulky compared to my iCare smaller/lighter unit, but this is only a minor inconvenience at the flying field, but at home it is no problem at all. Because they are meant to be inside the computers protective outer cover, they do not have any protection from stuff dropping inside and causing problems, but this can be easily mitigated.

I'm very glad William posted this PS info, and especially his making it clear to be VERY CAREFUL if you build one. Experienced people like you know how to do it safely, but inexperienced people may want to buy one of the "pre-built" conversions or an iCare PS.

BTW: I hope you guys are enjoying the power and nice table over at the car track at WN. It makes ECL very convenient. I have to remember to thank those guys some day. I left two ceramic tiles under the table for everyone to use under your batteries for safe charging on the wooden table. Maybe someday we will get solar panels like we have at the basin ECL field. 

Regards, 
Rudy