They only have the cheaper ones in Hong Kong.
I’ve got an 817nd and currently run on a SLAB.
I have the 4200mah lifepo4 battery. I havnt used anywhere near the capacity of it yet. I have used 10w and 25w with it on my ts480 which uses quite a lot of juice. I’m not sure however if I should do a storage charge after an activation or only do that if it’s going to sit on a shelf for months not weeks.
73
Anthony
I think you will find they come back in stock within a short time. There are thousands of RC enthusiasts buying these things.
Most of the chargers require a DC source, any 12-14v supply at 1amp or so. That allows for recharging from a car battery.
I don’t recharge mine with a series connection (like a lead acid battery). They are a bit prone to charging at different rates on each cell. Balanced charging is highly recommended.
73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
Yes Hobbyking have a European Warehouse - not sure if it is in the Netherlands or Germany (one of the two).
DC input for the charger is the most flexible option. That way you can charge from the car (between activations) or from home with a small plugpack (I bought a 2.5A 12V plugpack that is tiny, lightweight and takes up hardly any extra room in the bag when travelling).
Matt
VK1MA
Would a tracer battery not be better value for money a 12v 8ah weighs 600g and cost a £104, comes with all your charging leads and is certified safe UN38.3. Been using mine over 3 years now without a problem with the ft817 and kx3, even has a handy fuel gauge Tracer 12V 8Ah Lithium Polymer Battery Pack - Tracer Power or for the newer model Tracer 12V 7Ah LiFePO4 Battery Pack - Tracer Power
Saving up for the 4ah model weighs in at 300g cost £74, it is best to purchase the bullet bare ends cable and fit some power pole connectors on the end.
73
Graeme
when i was looking at LIFEpo batteries i found the tracer batteries wre more expensive than the 4200Mah battery I got from HobbyKing. They do look nice and neat the tracer ones but too expensive for my budget at the time.
73
Anthony
Even more flexible is to have a dual input charger, mains and 12V DC. Several such exist.
I recently bought an “IMAX B6AC V2 Professional Balance Charger/Discharger” from Hobby King to charge an LiFePO4 4200mAH battery I purchased from them. The charger info can be found at
Radio Control Planes, Drones, Cars, FPV, Quadcopters and more - Hobbyking . It took some time to find this on their website, as they don’t exactly push them.
The charger is marvellous with many features and charges everything you might need.
Word of warning though. It came from their International Warehouse, which I found out after the event was in Hong Kong. So I had to pay the postage from Hong Kong and import duty, which was a bit unexpected. Having said that it is a marvelous product, and the battery and charger were still considerably cheaper that a similar battery/charger from Tracer, even taking into account the postage and customs charges.
73’s - David - G4ZAO
As has been said before you get what you pay for.
Hi David, the 12v only (not-mains) version of that charger is available in the UK Hobby King Warehouse:
and the European Warehouse:
But as you say the mains powered version is only in the Hong Kong Warehouse - which is a shame as this does appear to be a very useful product covering LIPO, LifePO, NiMH and even NiCD balanced charging and discharging for batteries up to 6 cells.
Ed.
They are also not the “genuine” and are copies of the original IMAX charger. Good copies it must be said.
I have one here.
The program code like it was written by a 1st year undergraduate though, terrible clunky menu system 
They will be writing the next version of Windows.
I predict “Windows” will fall by then 
1 Like
Well the last few versions, and possibly all, have been written by school kids so why would they change that.
I am still on Windows Seven and when I leave uni this year I am going to make another big attempt to move over to a Debian based distro.
I nearly did it with Slackware when I was a teenager but it was difficult unless I had a specific purpose for Linux to become motivated to make it my default OS. It taught me some valuable stuff, but I should have stuck with it.
Now I think It should be possible to run all my applications within Linux, remains to be seen.
Is the inability of being able to fully charge a LIPO at high current a sign that the battery is failing?
I have a 5000 mAH 3S LIPO and the relevant balanced charger and usually I put the charger on its maximum (2A) current and all three cells are charged within about an hour / 1.5 hours (depending upon how much I have used the battery). Now I am finding that when I turn power off to the charger, so that it goes into monitor mode, it is saying that at least one cell is not fully charged (although it reported 100% charge when the power was on). If I then switch the charger to 1A and run it for another 20 minutes or so, all cells then report 98 - 100% charged under the monitor mode.
Ed.
I have always been taught when charging battery its usually best to slow change it as fast charges tend to kill battery’s quicker, my Lifepo 8400mah takes couple hours at 1.7A I set it at and it shows night on full balanced charge across its four cells. But like the way it shuts off when its finished.
Karl
Checking the guidance on the Hobby King site, it appears that the rate can be up to 1/100th of the mAH capacity - so 1.6 amps for a 1600 mAH battery, 2 amps for a 2000maH and so on. So my 5000mAH battery should be fine being charged at up to 5 amps, but as the charger has a maximum of 2 amps, it will never be charged at that rate and in fact for my 2500mAH LIPO, I set the charger to 1amp.
I have some quite old LiPO packs now. I’ve always used a very cheap Mystery CX450 charger that only connects to the balance port. The B6 and other higher current charges connects to the make connections and the balance connect. In the case of my charger, the charging current is about 800mA max ISTR. The packs date from 2009 or so and are still going after 5 years use most weekends. I can see that capacity has decreased because the front panel voltage display drops quicker than it used to do. I wonder if this lower charging current and hence slower charging time is why the cells are still going FB?
Hi Ed, Is there any science behind that or is just gut feel? I’m interested as I always feel high rates are bad but there is no science behind my gut feel.
Compton
VK2HRX