evranch
Well-known member
I have a small collection of good 18650s for equipment around here on the farm, flashlights etc. Was looking in to building a bank of salvage cells for off-grid power. Then I recently was swapping out some cells and thinking - hey, these are pretty light. Sure enough other people are already flying them!
There appear to be plenty of benefits:
- half the weight per mAh
- much more crashable
- more available in Canada, cheaper, almost free as salvage
- build your pack to suit the plane instead of the other way around
- if put in holders, weight can be distributed easily and swapping cells is quick
- use the same cells in different configurations for goggles, transmitters, planes, quads etc.
Only one disadvantage? Low continuous currents?
It looks like there are lots of cells putting out 20-30A continuous now, and most of my planes have 30A ESCs on them. For the 60A planes that's just another parallel string.
Don't see very many good holders out there that look like they could handle 30A, though. Looks like I would be soldering them into packs.
They really appeal to me for my "sheepdog" quad as I can could cut the weight, gain performance and keep the flight time or gain even more.
There appear to be plenty of benefits:
- half the weight per mAh
- much more crashable
- more available in Canada, cheaper, almost free as salvage
- build your pack to suit the plane instead of the other way around
- if put in holders, weight can be distributed easily and swapping cells is quick
- use the same cells in different configurations for goggles, transmitters, planes, quads etc.
Only one disadvantage? Low continuous currents?
It looks like there are lots of cells putting out 20-30A continuous now, and most of my planes have 30A ESCs on them. For the 60A planes that's just another parallel string.
Don't see very many good holders out there that look like they could handle 30A, though. Looks like I would be soldering them into packs.
They really appeal to me for my "sheepdog" quad as I can could cut the weight, gain performance and keep the flight time or gain even more.