Battery Purchase Websites?

Drewidicus

Junior Member
I am in the process of building my first plane (FT Flyer) and am very new to the hobby. I have been successful in finding all the parts I need except for reasonably priced batteries. I have checked out hobby king and found that their shipping costs are pretty high which makes what seems like a good deal much less of a good deal. The other places i have checked always seem to be back ordered.
Do you guys have any places that I may not have checked yet where you can get batteries?

Thanks

Drewidicus
 

aiidanwings

Senior Member
Hobby Partz has free shipping on orders over $50. Tower Hobbies and Grayson Hobbies have free shipping options, but I do not know the details.
 

nerdnic

nerdnic.com
Mentor
Valuehobby.com is a great US based option and shipping is 4 bucks. Their batteries are also very cheap, very close to hobbyking prices but with cheaper shipping.
 

Montiey

Master Tinkerer
I got my batteries from local shops.. What battery are you looking for? I use a 3cell 1000mAh in my flyer, but is a bit heavy, I also use a 730mAh 3cell lipo and thats much lighter. I can still go vertical with the 1000. Oh, BTW I'm using a hextronik 1300kv motor.
 

Team_Monkey

New member
Drew, Are you sure you had the US warehouse selected for HobbyKing? Usually shipping in the states isn't bad at all.
Almost all of my batteries are Nanotech, purchased from the US warehouse.

Another source for LiPo's with fast, fair shipping is Heads Up RC. It's been a couple years since I bought LiPo's from them but they hold up well.

Good Luck!
 

CrashRecovery

I'm a care bear...Really?
Mentor
I've been buying mine locally lately, Venom and E-flight but I first got all of mine from Grayson Hobby.
 

Drewidicus

Junior Member
Thanks for all the responses. Definitely helpful.

Drew, Are you sure you had the US warehouse selected for HobbyKing? Usually shipping in the states isn't bad at all.

Yeah i had the US warehouse selected. Right now I am looking at ~800mah 3s. Hobbypartz had them in stock on their website but as soon as I placed the order i got an email saying they were back ordered for 4-6 weeks! It seems like it may be difficult for retailers to get Lipos right now as almost every site i visit is out of stock on the 500-1k mah 2s and 3s.
I am gonna call the Hobby shop near my house and see what there prices are on the batteries. In previous experience they hae been more expensive than online.

Thanks,

Drew
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
Regarding HK - Make sure you're using the "Swiss Post" option for shipping from the International warehouse - 2 out of 3 orders I've placed with it arrived in just over 7 days and shipping was cheaper than USPS Priority from a US address to another US address. But...that 3rd order....hit a customs snag and was held at LAX for two weeks then shipped back to Hong Kong for new paperwork and re-shipped causing it to take almost a month to get to me. Still as dirt cheap as the shipping was I can't complain too much about a 2 out of 3 record for fast shipping. Just don't order something from overseas unless you're willing to take the risk that it may take some time to arrive. (And yes, Lipos can be shipped Swiss Post at the same great low rates...but due to the weight of lipos the shipping cost can go up quick.)

I'm not a fan of HobbyPartz. I was. And I love their skylipos. Best bang for the buck on Lipo's I've found. But they haven't had them in stock in over a year and the last batch of them I heard a lot of reports of problems. And I had a nightmare order with them where I ordered things that showed as in stock on the site. They shipped "Something" but it only got as far as their local post office before being returned to them (the same day!) as undeliverable and then they just ignored it. After a week I contacted them and they said I had refuse delivery. I pointed out that I never had a chance to and their own tracking showed it as not even leaving the town their warehouse was in before going back to them. They said they'd resend it. Then they said they couldn't resend it because they were out of stock on almost everything in the order (even though the site still claimed they had stock) and that they had returned the items from the original returned shipment to stock but then sold them to other people during that week I was waiting on them to fix the shipping issue. I asked for my money back and they tried to talk me into credit instead but I insisted on a refund because the stuff I was ordering was what I needed and they didn't have any other options and I needed that money to buy the parts I need from somewhere else at that point. They finally agreed to a refund but dragged their feet and took another week to issue it.

So I'm done with ordering from HobbyPartz.

I have ordered the GeForce batteries from valuehobby and they were cheap to ship and fast. But I wasn't huge on the batteries. The balance leads were REALLY short and the power leads were kind of short as well. The packs worked....but mine didn't last very long - though that was probably mostly due to me being rough on them as a new flyer and making the mistake of trying to learn 4ch on a plane that mounts the battery right up front with no protection :)

I've also heard good things about the glacier batteries from BuddyRC and I've heard decent things about BuddyRC: http://www.buddyrc.com/battery/glacier-lipo-battery.html

I'm thinking about trying a few of theirs for my next battery order.
 

jhitesma

Some guy in the desert
Mentor
I am gonna call the Hobby shop near my house and see what there prices are on the batteries. In previous experience they hae been more expensive than online.

If it's anything like my local hobby shop be prepared for some serious sticker shock. They only carry one or two "name brands" of lipo and no private label - and the prices on the name brands (like eflight) were through the roof. They wanted something like $70 for a 2200mah 30c! And that was one of their cheaper options! 500mah packs were going for 20-30$ I know they've got a lot of overhead and I want to support them...but holy cow were their battery prices high. (though to be fair they don't seem to be very interested in model aviation, they're mostly car/truck/buggy focused and had better selection of hard case car batts.)