So your all ready to take your heli for a spin around the field, but for how long can you fly safely.

Last thing you want is to Kill Your Battery or worse yet come crashing down to the ground!

How do you safely calculate how long you can fly for with a given battery?

Well the easiest way is with real data.

Scenario: 2200Mah Battery used in a 450 class heli

1st we want to make sure we are starting off with a TRUE 2200mah battery.

         If the battery is old, used and abused, it may only truly be a 1500mah or less. if in doubt, do a discharge and charge routine to test batteries capacity.

** also if it's a new battery, more accurate results will be given after battery break-in period, 5+ charge/discharge cycles***

2nd let's see how much capacity is being taken for a given time.

       Take your heli and fly it as you're going to on a normal basis for a timed period, let's say 3 min.

3rd. using a charger that displays the capacity put back into the battery during a charge

       Go ahead and charge your battery at a 1c rating ( we will discuss charge rates later) in this case it would be 2.2amps

4th. take charge capacity and divide by time.

       So let's say it showed a charged capacity of 660mah for a 3 min flight time, that is 220mah a min

 Now we can calculate total safe flight time for the battery by.

A 2200mah battery capacity should never be discharged below 80%

So that gives us 1760mah's to work with

1760mah divided by the 220mah a min usage by heli gives you a flight time of 8 minutes.

Please remember that this flight time will change as changes are done on heli set-up, flight styles, and

battery. Use this as a guideline and adjust as needed.