Turnigy 6000mAh Lipo

Hi
After a 2 week holiday on the west coast of France (Vendee, where there are no hills) I managed to get to Gyrn Moelfre GW/NW-049 for a long awaited activation. Just in time - I was starting to suffer summit withdrawal symptoms.

I thought I would try out my newly arrived 6000mAh Turnigy Nano-Tech Lipo battery, which weighs in at 481g - a considerable weight saving on my usual 10Ah slab.

I activated the summit first using 5w on FM attracting 16 chasers. Jill (MW6JBZ/P) then followed up with another 6 to claim her own activation.

I then erected my 40m dipole for a spot of rather QRS CW. I have been practising my CW for ages but the reading bit never seems to get any better hi hi. Thanks to all the chasers who had great patience with me and repeated things several times. Especially my first contact - DL8JJ/P, a S2S with Emit on DM/HE-017. Picking a call from a pile up is not easy when your CW is rubbish!! Despite requesting QRS, I still got a lot of stations sending at a phenomenal rate - unfortunately I was only able to answer the chasers sending at a speed I could read. I suppose if you normally send at 40wpm then 20wpm is quite slow…

I managed to work another 18 stations before the boss said “QRT now”. An hour and a half in the intermittent showers was enough.

Thanks to everybody who called in.

Anyway, when I got home I charged the 3S Lipo to find it took 3988mA of charge. Thinking this was a little high, I checked the FT-857 and found that the 7.0327 CW I had been transmitting on was still set at 100w from my holiday endeavours. This might also go some way to explain the RF dig I got from my key.

I bought my Lipo from the link below for $48.57US & postage.

I have bought many items from them before and they are most reliable with reasonably prompt postage. They have standard postage/weight rates and it is therefore sometimes cheaper to combine postage or buy more than one item.
The batteries are 3S, 11.1 V although this is the quoted discharge voltage. They charge to 4.2v each cell giving 12.6V. They are very heavy duty for their size giving 25C continuous or a 50C burst - not that a SOTA op would ever need it hi hi.

40 QSO’s in total, some low power but FM including longer chats and some multiple repeats of high power CW and still enough left for quite a few more.

The difference in the weight is superb.

Regards
Dave
M0TUB (MW0TUB/P)

Ps Mike (2E0YYY)
Don’t mean to put you out of business - perhaps you can do a deal for bulk!!

In reply to M0TUB:

Well done on the CW Dave, it will get easier I promise you :slight_smile:

Best 73,

Mark G0VOF

In reply to M0TUB:

Radio Control Planes, Drones, Cars, FPV, Quadcopters and more - Hobbyking

This looks a good battery, but just a comment: other things being equal I would rather have two or three smaller batteries (e.g. 2-4Ah) than one big one. Any battery can fail, and lithium batteries can suffer from fairly sudden death.

One of my LiPo packs recently started giving up after only a few QSOs on a summit, even though it ought to have had plenty of capacity for at least two activations. If it had been my only one, it would have really spoilt the day.

Investigation later revealed one cell with almost no capacity; no idea why - it wasn’t an expensive battery and I suppose these things happen. My point is that carrying two or three small batteries means that a single cell failure is not going to bring proceedings to a halt.

In reply to M1MAJ:

I do agree, and indeed there are smaller batteries available which would enable the redundancy and security you mention.

Initially, I was going to buy a rather expensive 14Ah Lipo but thought two 6’s would be a better bet - just for that reason.

I have tried this one and it worked well for me using the FT-857. If I was using an FT-817 I would carry a couple of smaller ones. As it is, I have bought another one of these which gives me 12mAh in total for less than half the weight of a 7Ah slab and a third of that of the 10Ah slab I used to carry. It is quite a bit of power and should be far more than needed for my normal activations. Nothing like a flat battery and no spare after a long walk!!

I was going to build a paralleling harness to join the two together but have heard of a few horror stories about internal currents being set up between cells. Does anybody have any advice here?
I do charge the batteries using a balanced charger but whilst the individual cells in a single battery are balanced, what about two connected as above?
Regards
Dave

In reply to M0TUB:

Hi Dave,

I have 4 packs comprising of a 4AH LiPo and a 10AH NiMH in series to power my 857. Recently I have started using 2 packs paralleled up without any problem whatsoever (both the LiPos and NiMHs are connected in parallel rather than just making the connection across the combination of cells). I have not bothered connecting up the balancing leads on the LiPos as some people do as I feel that they are rather small and fragile and could be damaged, particularly under difficult operating conditions on a summit. The packs are connected together before operating and then separated at the end of the activation, but this is perhaps somewhat overcautious.

Beware of the copious drivel written about LiPos. Just take care and ensure everything is fused at an appropriate rating as a precaution.

73, Gerald G4OIG