A little while back I wrote about buying and installing LiPo Batteries as a means of upgrading my R/C plane, the HobbyZone Super Cub. Since then I’ve made a good deal of flights with the batteries and I can say without hesitation that I recommend them to any Super Cub owner with the desire to get into LiPo.

That being said, let’s examine some of the benefits upgrading your battery to LiPo affords the Super Cub owner.

• The batteries keep a full charge for months. When I was rotating between my 7 and 8-cell NimH batteries, I would have to “top them off” just before heading to the field. With the LiPos I simply charge them after flying and put them away until the next opportunity.
• The batteries power the plane MUCH longer. Someone recently asked me on this blog how long my LiPos last and I replied “about 40 minutes”. In all honesty that number is probably inflated as I have never actually timed a flight to be sure. But let me tell you, it sure feels like 40 minutes! I fly at about half throttle with the LiPos installed (which is plenty of juice for me) so your flight times may vary.
• The batteries are lighter than Nimh batts. Weight is everything in the world of R/C aircraft. The higher the mAH rating the longer the battery should last but for your Super cub you don’t need more than 1300 maH. 1500 would probably be fine but I’d prefer to keep the plane lighter with a 1300 rather than pack the extra reserve. Not to mention that a light flying weight is ideal when shooting aerial photography
• LiPos give you more power! Power in these terms is a combination of factors…

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This probably isn’t going to be of much interest to regular readers of this blog. But for the sake of those googlers and rc enthusiasts who found their way here I thought I would share a method to power your 12 volt battery charger indoors.

I decided to upgrade my plane a bit (a HobbyZone Super Cub) by moving from NiMH to LiPo batteries. Before the batteries arrive however, I needed to buy a new charger. Due to the inherent volatility of LiPo batteries I wanted to be sure I got one of the safest chargers available. After some shopping around I settled on the CellPro 4S.

It seems like any high-end battery similar to this one uses alligator clips and requires a 12 volt power source (i.e., car battery) to work. Seeing as how I didn’t like the idea of always charging under the hood, I looked for other solutions.

Inspired by a thread outlining the use of laptop ac to dc converters for doing so, I constructed this beast:

As you can see it’s just the DC Converter (which you can find an Ebay link to in the thread above), two bolts, 4 washers, 2 ring terminals, 2 nuts and a piece of wood for stabilization.

I also cut a small hole in the toolbox to feed the plug to the wall. When not in use it’s easy to push it back in. …that’s it, not much to it.

Thanks to ‘bpd282′ (on page 2 of the thread) for the idea of converting a tool box to house the electronics. It’s funny how similar my box turned out to his.

Guess all I need now are some batteries.