Well I was on Banggood and spied the XFX 250 helicopter kit , it's been a while since I have seen cheap kits so I ordered 2 .

I also saw the XFX280 today , looks interesting ..

If you fly 250 , this kit might be excellent for spare's , or if you have wanted to try this size ... They are cheap enough .
I havent flow 250 , but would very much like to give it a go , so I will post something when the kits get here ..

Well , it's not like batteries need oil - air and water . ( because they dont ) By maintenance I mean monitoring the health of the battery and some times doing a nice slow discharge and recharge ..

1) Recharging ( we all balance charge right ? ) .. A lot of people stress batteries both ways , discharged to power some application and then possibly a quick re-charge to get back in action . This is not really that great for the battery . But if you only plan on owning the batteries for a short time and you know what you are doing ( ) Unfortunately we humans tend to copy what others do without really knowing fully why or how , simply assuming that if Joe does it , I can do it .

Story Time : ( Not a battery story )

I was at one of our State Champs and one contestant was running a Diesel powered Goodyear model .. It was fast , very fast but would not hold a tune . The engine cooked every time the engine came on tune .. To say the owner of the model was frustrated - is an understatement . Anyhow after watching for a while I asked the person how much oil he was running in the fuel ( I was very interested in Lube for engines back then ) . Well apparently he was running 10% synthetic in his engine .. ( )
I was a little surprised at this revelation and thought it explained why his engine would not hold a tune . So I suggested he should try more oil . Well that was simply the wrong thing to say , and that individual flew into a tirade about - if so and so...Continue Reading

There is so much to cover about batteries , I always find something I left out , so sorry about that .

Lets talk performance .

Batteries are not created equal , just like there might be variance in car engines coming of an assembly line , there is variance in the cells that make up a battery pack . So many variables here .

Anyhow , are these individual cells tested and graded and then matched for battery packs ? ( I really don't think so - certainly not the cheaper ones ) So depending on where the pack builder sources there cells could seriously affect the over all quality . Lets get to performance ..

Batteries are graded by Capacity / number of cells / and discharge ... We are interested in discharge .

Now you may notice batteries have 20C / 25C / 30C and so forth on the labels ..
This is the discharge rating .. It means ( 20C ) 20 times capacity .
So lets say you have a 1000mAh 20C battery that is 3s with a nominal voltage of 11.1 volt

1000 x 20 = 20 Amps lets multiply that by the nominal voltage 11.1 ( Lets call it 11 ) 11 x 20 = 220 Watts
So on paper , we have established that this battery might be suitable for applications where the motor ( ? ) might produce around 200 Watts
So what just happened is we matched the battery pack to the power needs ..

Do you have to do this ? ( Well that's up to you ) The battery pack might be able to do better than that , but you also might run into issues where the batteries are maybe not that...Continue Reading

Might be time to talk about battery safety once again .
I really don't understand where some of the battery BS comes from , but apparently there are some misguided out there .

1) Batteries are not created equal . In fact there is a rather mighty variance when it comes to batteries . And it's these very variables that can cause problems for us .
2) It's important to buy batteries that can meet or exceed the needs of the application
3) We need to make sure the batteries we use / buy are safe . At the very least know at what point the batteries may be unsafe or problematic

Manufacturers ( those that assemble the batteries ) should be putting together balanced cells . And by that I mean each cell should be matched for Capacity , voltage at rest and discharge . But just how many companies actually do this ( costs money ) .

Voltage at rest ()

Well think of it this way .. You have a 3s battery and one cell has a resting voltage of say 4.18 volts after being fully charged , another has a resting voltage of say 4.15volts and the last cell has a resting voltage of 4.1 volts … Now all things being relatively equal , the lower voltage cell will reach lower voltages first . This means that cell will suffer lower over all voltage when discharged and all things being equal , degrade faster .

Capacity ()

This can vary quite a bit .. Lets say cell 1 has 1550 mAh , cell 2 has 1500mAh and cell 3 has 1200 mAh capacity . Obviously the cell with lower capacity...Continue Reading

With these micro quads getting cheaper all the time , it's getting hard to chose which one to buy ( ok! the other choice is to buy them all ) .

But if you have been wondering which to buy ? JJRC H36 or the Eachine E010 , well wonder no more !
It actually makes no difference !
They both use the same protocol , they both fly the same , and if not for the color I would not be able to tell them apart .
I never imagined two different (?) quads could fly exactly the same .. ( I think they are the same quad with different branding printed on them ) .
Anyhow , the bottom line is .... Buy the one priced the best .



Which ever one you get (?) , They are great Noob Quads !
I have been using mine for head on hovering and backward flight ..
These are so predictable - stable - easy to fly ( IrangeX IRX4 Mulit protocol module + 9XR pro ) that you can really learn the more advanced stuff and not worry or stress about crashing ..

I wonder if I can fly both at the same time ?

I am trying to do a give away : Does anyone know if there are any specific guidelines ? ( Rules )
I have done lots of these on other forums over the years , and I would like to do it here as well ..
I contacted Banggood , and up for grabs will be a Eachine E012 ..

But this will be the first time I attempt such @ RCG

Update = Not permitted !

Oh well !

Turnigy 9XR IrangeX ER9x JJRC H36 binding (1 min 28 sec)

Turnigy 9XR
IrangeX IRX4
ER9x
JJRC H36

Bind process

Turnigy 9XR pro IrangeX multi protocol module binding to models (1 min 12 sec)

A quick and dirty video on binding ...
Turnigy 9XR pro
IrangeX IRX4
Open Tx 2.2
JJRC H36 micro quad

Banggood Coupon Page Discounts on various products
Banggood mid year deals
RC Carnival Spend $55 get 5% OFF, Spend $110 get 10% OFF - Coupon Code: RCCarnival
Summertime FPV Racing 15% OFF Code - SFPV

With Open Tx and the IrangeX multi protocol module one often finds the channel order out of whack when binding to models .
For some strange reason most people go to Menu 6 ( Mixing ) to fix this ..

(?) Why not just got to Menu 5



The following video is a free public service announcement ....

Menu5 openTx (1 min 25 sec)

There is a new update available if you run OpenTx ..
My Turnigy 9XR pro was some times locking up on start ( Open Tx )
This latest build of OpenTx has not frozen on start yet .. ( I think there was some issue with the IrangeX multi protocol module on start )

So if anyone is having issue with OpenTx , U might want to try the latest release .