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I've still got a Hitec Powermate II which was a popular battery checker before LiPos came into common use.

 

That puts a load of 0.6amp at the 4.8v setting & 0.8amp at the 6volt setting. Futaba produced the BR-2000 checker at the time which also could load up the battery. IMG_0181.thumb.jpg.b3b90ea6132798fe29e58233057cf122.jpg

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2 hours ago, Robert Cracknell said:

I have a number of Ni-Mh cells that I would like to check out more thoroughly.

...

What is your favourite method?

 

I periodically cycle my NiMH packs on a decent charger discharging at around 1C and charging at around 0.75C.

 

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The battery voltage is less important than its ESR which limits the current it can supply, in fact a high-ESR pack can show an artificially high unloaded terminal voltage.  For example many of us run flight packs off a single Lithium cell, its a lower voltage than a 4.8v NiMh but has such a low ESR that the terminal voltage is maintained over wild variations in current draw.  

At the other extreme are those whose solution to a 4.8v pack that drops under load is to add another cell in series. This really is very poor practice, no engineer would fix a current supply and hence a voltage drop problem by raising the voltage, in fact an additional cell increases the already poor ESR by 25% and the % voltage drop for a given current will actually be worse. Power supply problems are best fixed with a low ESR high quality pack, not by upping its voltage in the vain hope that the extra cell will 'fill in the gaps' 👍

[/2p] 

Cheers
Phil

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I discussed this with George at 4-Max and suitable solutions for me is to use a high current UBEC or power distribution boxes. Both or these are supplied from 3S2200 lipos which has a couple of advantages. Firstly I use 3S2200 batteries as flight packs which means they get a good performance discharge (way beyond the sort of load a RX/servos would exert in normal use) so I know they will perform when I need them to. Secondly with a high current UBEC I won't get a brown out on the RX if a servo fails or jams as the UBEC can supply more than enough current.

 

Works for me, but I am sure there are a few die hard that would argue differently.

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