On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 09:44:06AM -0700, Bill Swingle wrote: | OK, hypothetically here. | | Say I'm at the slope but my Lithium charger uses only 120V AC. | | So, if I wanted to be reckless (go with me here), what can be done with a | Nicad charger and how?
Well, generally a charger's job is to put a certain amount of current into your battery, and a NiCd/NiMH charger does that as well as a LiPo charger. What really differs is how they turn off -- a NiCd/NiMH charger turns off when it sees a peak (or just after a certain amount of time for an old one) and a LiPo charger starts slowing down at a certain voltage, and finally stops at 4.2 volts/cell. So, if you sit there and watch your voltage as you charge your batteries very carefully, you can charge your LiPo pack with a NiCd charger. However, the charger will not turn itself off automatically, and will happily overcharge your battery if you forget to turn it off yourself -- which will ruin the battery at best, and could cause it to catch fire if you're unlucky. It's easy to get distracted and forget to watch the charger, so I'd strongly suggest not doing this. You can get a low end LiPo charger for 2-3 cells for as little as $12 (http://www.nitrorcx.com/eeclipolilib.html) if your pack has a balancing connector, and for $25 (http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXHNW5) if not. Or you can get lower power 12v->110v inverter for around $20 if you want to power your charger at the field. Considering that your battery probably costs more than these chargers, and is so easy to ruin just by getting distracted, I'd strongly suggest just getting the right charger -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED] RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
