Rx Battery

[Oxxo]

On average, how long will a fully charged Rx battery last? How long do I dare keep my powered glider up, especially if I find a good thermal? ;)

[LuckyArmpit]

Alot depends on the mah rating of the rx battery. I'd say if you use a 1600 mah rx batt, you could fly up there for a very long time!!!

Dave...

[wrenwright]

A buddy of mine kept his gas-powered Sr. Telemaster up for 75 minutes and still had good volts indicated with his onboard voltmeter. He was using standard 600-mah flight pack batteries. Still, I would say an hour is about all I would do without coming down.

[DaveSawers]

It depends on lots of things, not just the capacity of the flight battery.

Servos take much more current than the receiver so if you float around making little or no control inputs you can probably stay up 5 times longer than if you were doing aerobatics.

If your control surfaces move freely, servos will take less current than if the control surfaces are stiff.

Fully charge your flight battery, fly for an hour or so, land and then discharge your flight battery through a Watt meter or similar to measure how much is left in it. This will then allow you to calculate the absolute maximum amount of time you could fly. Halve that time for safety.

[abenn]

I use 700mAh receiver packs in my power models. After three 15-minute flights one weekend, they still show at least 500mAh remaining when I cycle them the following weekend. So, that's 45 minutes flying on 200mAh. So, theoretically I should be safe for 135 minutes flying with plenty to spare.

Having said that, I personally wouldn't deliberately stay up for more than about an hour!

[fhhuber506771]

With a Gentle Lady glider (2 ch, 400 mah NiCd, 2 Futaba 3003 equiv servos) being gentle with the model I had one flight of 2.5 hrs and landed because the TRANSMITTER was starting to lose power.

What you fly and how you fly will make a lot of difference. An average .40 trainer with 600 mah RX pack.. not a lot of aerobatics and flying mostly 1/2 to 2/3 throttle.. you can get an hr to an hr and a half of flying in per charge. A .40 on a Fun-fly type doing a lot of aerobatics and a lot of full throttle stuff, expect 35 to 45 min. A .60 powered P-51 doing everything you can think of .. with retracts and flaps... 25 min and you better be checking the 600 mah pack's voltage.