Building a new flight battery for the Lucky 13...

Wow, I'm still checking and repairing batteries. This is a great time of year for this sort of work, since I'm not real keen on flying in cold weather :-) The Lucky-13 flight battery was shot...a 3000 mAh battery that was checking about 800 mAh...not good! I still have a bunch of cells in a RC car pack that cycle nicely. I set my Accu-Cycle up to test single cells, and test them all, one cell at the time. Here, I chopped out a nice 5 cell pack that tests at about 3500 mAh. I installed the connector from the old pack, slipped it in a piece of sleeve, and shrank it down. Here it is, ready to be reinstalled into it's new home. Once that's in place, I'll move on to the next bird and check it's flight battery. 

Two chunks of 3600 mAh NiMH batteries broken apart, testing each cell, separately.

5 cells, all tacked together. Next, it's time to install the power connector.

 A final test, with all 5 cells in series. It cycled out at about 3500 mAh.

Fresh heat shrink covering installed, ready for installation in the airplane.

Dave AMA119484
http://www.RCDave.net

Still Repairing Stuff...

Well, I picked a good time of year to decide I was gonna check things over and get back active in the local flying club, since it seems I'll be busy repairing stuff for a while... Things have been "parked" over 2 years, and it's amazing how much goes bad from inactivity. While checking over my flight gear, I discovered my glow driver wasn't working. I opened it up, and found the battery had failed and was leaking. No biggie, I've been chopping up a good 16 cell 3000 NiMH RC car pack for batteries to build more receiver packs for my airplanes, so I pulled a sub-C cell from that and slipped it in. Nothing. I opened it up, and saw the center contact was oxidized black. I grabbed the Dremel tool and a small stone, and removed the oxidation to expose the shiny yellow brass contact. Once reassembled, all was well. Another piece of field gear ready to go!

My broken glow driver...
 

A 3000 mah NiMH salvaged from the RC car pack...

I removed the outer jacket so it would slide into the glow driver easily...

The center contact in the upper housing was oxidized black, and wouldn't make contact with the battery...

After repairs, all was well and ready to go flying!



Dave AMA119484
http://www.RCDave.net