How long can I fly on a 600 mah receiver battery?

[fprintf]

I was just rereading my posting on remebering to switch on the airplane before launching and someone had posted that they just plug the battery into the receiver, tape the plane shut and fly.

How long should I be able to fly on one charge of a 600mah battery keeping it on the whole time?

My highlander has standard hitech 422 servos if that makes a difference. I realize how much I wiggle the sticks may make a difference, but is there any way to ballpark it? E.g. turn on the plane, set my transmitter timer for x minutes, and fly until it beeps.

Thanks in advance,
Stuart

[Ollie]

Fully charge your system. Then turn it on some evening while you are watching television and note the time. Move the sticks about as often as you would while flying. Note the time when the system stops working, subtact 25% to allow for air loads and as a safety factor. That's how long you can fly.

[Jack Hyde]

I had a couple of problems caused by flight batterries going dead at inconvenient times, so I got a Dymond Tyrbo Charger that reads out how many mha it delivers to the battery when it charges. I was flying 6 servo planes using 600 mah batteries and it was marginal. The new charger showed that for my typical 2 or so hour flying session, turning the rcvr battery off about 1/3 of the time, I used 200 to 350 mah to refill the battery. I then got new 1100 mah flight batteries so now I use about 1/4 of the battery capacity during a typical session. I think that most of the battery energy is used driving the servos so it makes little difference whether you turn it off between flights. Also 2 servo planes would require about 1/3 the battery capacity of my 6 servo planes. 600 mah should be plenty for 2 servo flying.
The 1100 mah rcvr batteries I got were about the same weight and price of the 600 mah batteries I had been using. They weigh a shade over 3 ozs and cost about $11 at Mr Battery.
The Dymond charger will cycle a battery, discharging then recharging and tell you how much the battery holds. I cycled all of my packs and some were not so good anymore. It is hard to know what your battery capacity is if you don't cycle it once in a while.
Jack
Red Bluff, CA

[N6UBO]

I use a battery monitor that's nothing more than a strip of LED's. Green, Yellow and Red.
At full charge, the green are lit, as the voltage level drops, it gets into the yellow, and finally red.
You can check it at the end of a flight by loading up the battery (stirring the pot). I have them on two of my sailplanes, one 2 mtr plane, is located in the instrument panel, the other is taped to the underside of the translucent canopy. For $15-$17 each, it's pretty cheap piece of mind. No more "How much battery do I have left?" or "Did I charge this pack last night?" Of course, if you really wanted to be fancy about it, you could make an inverted pass about 5 feet over yourself and check the color as it goes by............JUST KIDDING GUYS!

Bernie

Crinkle Crinkle little spar
Pushed beyond the yeild point far
Up above the world so high
Bits and pieces in the sky......