Battery care?

[Randymanpipe]

Hey all,

 

Just wondered, what you guys do to prolong the life of your battery's? So I fully charged my 7.4 2200mah lipo on thurs night and then stuck it in the gun ready for Sunday. Will this drain the battery? Or will the power loss be minimal and not worth worrying about?

[Baz JJ]

Minimal but unplug it until Sunday to be on the safe side.

[Jedi_Master]

Going to a skirmish with one unconnected LiPo battery in the stock of my gun. Does the spare battery need any special treatment in transit and at the safe zone? I was just going to keep it in a small tin until needed.

[Baz JJ]

I dont like keeping batteries in tin boxes. Chance of a short is remote but I prefer plastic boxes. Lipos normally come in a plastic box which clips shut and I use these for transit.

 

Going to a skirmish with one unconnected LiPo battery in the stock of my gun. Does the spare battery need any special treatment in transit and at the safe zone? I was just going to keep it in a small tin until needed.

[Jedi_Master]

Both my batteries are loose, so I will have to see what plastic containers eBay has available. Did not even think of a risk from shorting, just the need to stop the battery getting crushed or fire risk.

[Randymanpipe]

Roger that baz, disccon battery complete.

[Randymanpipe]

U got a gun case jedi? I just transport my spare in one of the accessories pockets.

[Adam3088]

For long term storage (months of no use) you want to keep lipo's with a reasonable amount of charge in them, but not low or fully charged. They gradually lose a bit of power over time, so storing them nearly empty can kill them outright and fully charged can cause them to puff up. But otherwise just keep them disconnected in a non-conductive box.

 

Used to do RC racing, someone had a metal case full of NI-MH's that they had lined with electrical tape, the inevitable happened and one shorted out. Sounded like a bomb going off, tore the case apart!

[TheFull9]

LiPos are easy really, barely any maintenance needed compared to the old types in my experience. You can buy fire-resistant storage bags which will contain them at least to some extent if the worst happened (which is absurdly unlikely and would generally require deliberate physical abuse of the battery), they also remove the shorting risk being fabric and all. Tbh I give all mine a charge before I put them away, have about 8 packs here and owned most for at least 4-5 years, never had any trouble. For taking to a game I use said 'Fire Safe' bag within my gun bag just as an extra belt and braces

 

Only time I've had a battery puff up on me personally was actually in my PSP funnily enough. Bought it in 2007, used it loads when I was going through training as I couldn't afford a laptop and we had no internet for the first few months. Put it away some time in 08, got it out when I moved base a few months back (so it'd been totally flat for around 6 years) and the pack had expanded just enough that the bay door wouldn't shut any more. I've personally only ever seen issues in airsoft when they're run too close to empty; or one time when I left my battery with the site staff at a certain place in Norfolk (said staff were utterly shite at running an airsoft game and everything related to it) who somehow managed to make my pack puff right out almost immediately, despite the fact I'd been using it for some time with zero issues using a very basic charger. You'd think someone running the shop at a site would know the day 1 school-boy basics of what sort of juice to put in to a given style of battery.. but apparently not. They didn't give a fuck about my equipment they'd literally just destroyed through their sheer incompetence and then got a sulk on when I left it on their counter to dispose of. Genuine morons.

[iAcorn]

I had two 9.6V NiMH batteries that I use in my G&G MP5 but I haven't actually skirmished for about 2 years. I went to test them after leaving them on charge (with a really cheap charger to be fair) for a night and testing it just before skirmish I found they were pretty dead. I could not even get one shot out of the thing! Very sad I had to skip the skirmish that was supposed to be my glorious return to the field. Turns out it was just a balls charger and I got an 8.4V battery as a backup now.