Propel Speedstar helicopter battery care

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corneileous

RCTalk Champion
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Location
Oklahoma
RC Driving Style
  1. Bashing
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Hey guys, I pulled out of storage my little Propel Speedstar rc helicopter that I had bought probably 4 years ago from Radio Shack and of course, I have two new replacement batteries waiting at home for me because the reason it was more/less put into storage and pretty much forgot about was because the last time I flew it, the batteries would no longer hold a charge or even charge up enough to even get any kind of lift out it.

Well, after googling around, I found out that these little batteries are in fact Lipo batteries; didn’t know that before and didn’t even start learning a thing or two about Lipo batteries in general until about last spring or so, so since these batteries are Lipo batteries, if the same still holds for these like their much bigger and more powerful brothers that power most of today’s electric cars, boats and trucks, do I need to store these batteries at half to 60% charge and not at either dead or fully charged?

How would I even know how to charge them that way when the charger that came with the helicopter is about as plain Jane as it gets because all it is, is a little black piece of plastic about the size of a Wheat Thin cracker that has a cord that plugs into any USB port and on the top of the charger, it’s got two little plug-ins so that you can charge two batteries at the same time and all the charger has for an indicator is a little red LED light for each slot that when the batteries are charging, the red light comes on and when the batteries done charging, the little red LED goes out, that’s it.

Is there anybody on here that’s either had, or still has or know of anybody that’s had one of these little propel SpeedStar helicopters that knows the secret on getting the maximum normal life span out of these little batteries? Thanks.
 
The thing is with a lipo cell (single one needs to know its capacity?) as in mah to give any recommendations on the best way to charge and then put into storage)A 1c charge is most common and there are all types of chargers on the market...Id say not to use the 60% but use voltage to store its 3.75 volts a full charge is 4.2 volts a cell no more..and when put into storage its a good idea to check the batteries every month as some self discharge(as in voltage goes down)
id invest in a digital display charger some are ac while other are dc only or ac/dc both.I run only dc I have several power supplies to power my chargers..i like to toolkit m6 or m8 nice charger with many option I use in rc
 
A 1c charge is for every 1000mah you use 1 amp to charge ..so a 1500mah lipo gets a 1c charge thats 1.5 amps the charger will go down in amps as voltage go's up not sure what batteries you have so I can not recommend a charge rate along with how many cells??and usb chargers are not always that good
after doing some inet searching I see its a micro copter with a single cell battery that plugs into model and no real mah given..so you might be limited to a usb charger. you might be able to jerry rig a battery reader up to see the voltage your battery is at but it will take some work from you and solder skills..sorry I can not give better details as I dot run and micro rc...I start at 1/18 scale and go up to 1/2 scale nothing in the sub 1/24 scale or smaller. Something along this line but I think you will have to still modify this cell checker..
1S Whoop Battery Checker - PH2.0 and JST 1.25 for Sale - RaceDayQuads
 
The thing is with a lipo cell (single one needs to know its capacity?) as in mah to give any recommendations on the best way to charge and then put into storage)A 1c charge is most common and there are all types of chargers on the market...Id say not to use the 60% but use voltage to store its 3.75 volts a full charge is 4.2 volts a cell no more..and when put into storage its a good idea to check the batteries every month as some self discharge(as in voltage goes down)
id invest in a digital display charger some are ac while other are dc only or ac/dc both.I run only dc I have several power supplies to power my chargers..i like to toolkit m6 or m8 nice charger with many option I use in rc
The only thing I know about these batteries is that they are 3.7V.... I’m not sure about the two batteries that I had bought sometime after I bought the helicopter but at least I can tell you the original battery that came with the helicopter is 150 MAH.

The two new batteries I just bought recently which look like the batteries in the first two pictures below, look identical to the two batteries that I had bought after I bought the helicopter a long time ago but I don’t know what these new battery's, and those other older two battery’s MAH is, because the listing on Amazon’s site for these two brand new batteries I just bought doesn’t say what the MAH is. If I had to take a guess, since they’re a little shorter than the original battery, probably maybe 130 MAH? Your guess is as good as mine.

In the last pic, that's a lot of what my battery charger looks like. Its not the same brand but just to give you an idea, that as the charger I use.

But now that you know a little more about my batteries and what type they are, where would a find a charger for them? I have a Dynamite Passport P1 Mini charger but I'm not sure if that kind of charger would charge these batteries.
 

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you can't tell what mah is by it being shorter . the new lipos are higher C rates than those 10 yeas ago and have more mah due to the improvement in lipo technology.. that charger will charge any 1 cell that will plug into it .it will not matter what mah it is as the go by voltage 4.2v is tops ..
 
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