Report Of Battery Testing Using The Payload
In Flight Configuration
By Tom Dawson, WB3AKD, Sunday, July 14, 2002 9:04 AM

The new batteries are Lithium Ion batteries salvaged from cell phone batteries. The interface to the batteries is by way of the included safety circuit board that shut off the current when the batteries reach the minimum safe voltage. Charging so far seems to take only a few hours.

Two 7.2 Volt (nominal) packs are wired in series and two of these are wired in parallel. Total weight of the Lithium batteries is 340 grams vs. 540 grams for the NiMH battery packs.

Capacity of the Li-ion pack looks to be about 2.4 AH. As the chart shows, we get a good 12 hours out of this pack vs about 7 out of the single NiMH pack.

I have been favorable impressed with the behavior of the Li-ion's during charging asI have not observed the batteries to heat up so that I could notice, where as heat during charging has been a big concern with the MiMH cells.

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