bad battery?

[DAN BERRY]

At the NATS I had 2 LiPo batteries for my Maverick. Early on Monday one battery would not give me abeep when I hooked it to the plane. The meter shows 12.56 volts. This is the battery that took a bath in pasture canal water. It worked fine for a bunch of flights since the bath. Now it just sits there. Do any E-gurus have an idea of what’s wrong?

[rivers]

Dan,
The voltage you’re getting is correct for a 3-cell lipo…(4.2 volts per cell for a fully charged battery). You are probably measuring the open circuit battery voltage. If there are no beeps when you plug into the controller, that means the ESC’s microcontroller is not getting 5 volts from the on-board regulator. If true, then your timer will also not be getting 5 volts. Try to probe for 5 volts at the input to the timer.
It sounds like your battery cannot support any load ….. even the small load drawn by the 5 volt regulator. So, either the battery is no good or there is a broken wire or a bad connection in your battery wiring. Check the solder joints at the battery wires to connector. Re-solder just to be sure.
Dick

[Jim Jennings]

Cut the shrink off of the cells and look at the little tabs that connect them. The tabs are some what fragile and a tab that is barley hanging on will show you voltage but will not support a load. Has the battery met with any sudden stops with the ground?

[DAN BERRY]

I’ll open up the shrink wrap and look at the connections.
It hasn’t had any unintended air-ground interaction. It HAS gotten soaked in a canal.
Thanks for advice.

[Author]

Posts