NIGHT BLADE - DURATION

[RotoJon]

Bought a new set of Align Night Blades and can only get 8 minutes out of one blade before the green led is fadded to nearly nothing and the blue is getting dim.

The opposite blade works great.... 50 minutes of duration with no problem. both blades appear to be charging normally just no endurance on the one blade....

Any way to condition the battery and check its integrity??? I think I might have to see if the LHS will exchange them for a new set.

[socal]

the blades use a micro lipo, if ts running like that then the battery is bad

[chimaera]

I have the same problem. They came out of the box like that.

[socal]

align uses align lipos in the blades, and we all know how much those suck

[Finless]

OK I have charged my blades and plugged them in to see how long they would go... an hour later I unplugged as i got tired of waiting....

BUT the way the SPLIT charger works could be a problem so I reccomend charging each blade separatly to be sure they are fully charged. Bottom line you should get WAY MORE than 8 minutes or your night blades are bad!

Bob

[RotoJon]

Thanks Bob,

The LHS has agreed to exchange them for me... I was hoping to see if others were having a similar problem. These are the new design (white) blades. Crashed 2 sets of the old black ones and even tried to use one salvaged blade from each crash to make a set but they were too unbalanced.

Anyway, This one blade is certainly bad. I tried charging one blade at a time... as well as many other ortions and i meter the voltage while the blades are lit.... one blade holds 3.75vdc forever and the other drops from 4.18 to 2.8 in about 8 minutes. Defenately Bad out of the box.

What i have noticed from metering the charger is that it sends 4.25vdc to each balde until the current drops below about 4miliamp then it turn green until the voltage drops below 4.05vdc at which time the charger will kick on again. the charger is pretty sweet little tool.

Anyway, If anyone else is noticing a similar problem out of the box I would request an exchange....

[chimaera]

Wow I can only get about two minutes from mine. Will Align actually do anything about it?

[aballen]

I had the exact problem with a set I got from grandrc, I calle dthem up and they said to send them back, I sent back the whole kit, blades, charger, everything.

Expecting a new replacement set

[aballen]

Question for you Finless, can you elaborate on the split charger statement you made here? my new blades look good(I'll see tonight), but since its a lipo I want to be careful not to overcharge, or over discharge... I'll charge them 1 at a time, but I would like a better understanding of why.

Thanks

Side note:
I got my replacements from GrandRC already, man, great vendor... meanwhile I'm waiting for a replacement lipo from assurancerc... that I mailed out almost 2 weeks ago

Originally Posted by Finless

OK I have charged my blades and plugged them in to see how long they would go... an hour later I unplugged as i got tired of waiting....

BUT the way the SPLIT charger works could be a problem so I reccomend charging each blade separatly to be sure they are fully charged. Bottom line you should get WAY MORE than 8 minutes or your night blades are bad!

Bob

[JC]

Originally Posted by aballen

Question for you Finless, can you elaborate on the split charger statement you made here? my new blades look good(I'll see tonight), but since its a lipo I want to be careful not to overcharge, or over discharge... I'll charge them 1 at a time, but I would like a better understanding of why.

I think what Bob was referring to is the fact that the charger with 2 charge leads will charge both blades at the same time assuming there is a good connection on both blades.

If one is not making a good connection, you won't know it since the led will show charging status from the other blade. With a bad or intermittent connection, it may charge one blade for only a few minutes which of course will show up as short run time.

If you charge one blade at a time, you know from the leds on the charger that it's making a connection and showing charge for each blade separately.

You may very well have a bad cell in one blade but you'll know for sure if you eliminate the problem the split charger can create.

[aballen]

does it blance chage the 2 blades/lipos?

does it overcharge if you only plug 1 in?

[kama1]

nope your good .....you can charge one blade at a time no problem
as far as balance ....think its a non issue...would only be one really stupid small cell in there

[Bravo99]

I tested my night blades and after a full charge one blade lasted about 1.5 hours and the other started getting weaker about 15 minutes earlier..Im on my second set of night blades. I have not tested the duration of the second set. I crashed with the first set during the day when I was not using the light feature. So from now on I just put on the night blades for night time and back to regular blades for the day..

[aballen]

My first set got ~1 hour before I crashed. My most recent set came to me charged, and has had one hour on it easily, and there appears to be no need to charge them yet.

The manual says waith till th blue led goes out, then charge the blades. The blue leds require more power than the others, which is why they go out first. I'm waiting till they go dim to recharge.

[Bravo99]

Yeah I know.. I have read the manual too but when I tested my blades duration it was the green one that started to get dim and went out first on both blades, you think the guy who wrote the manual is color blind?

[comeflywithme]

I've also just had a faulty pair of Align Blades. Same story where one blade would hold charge well but the other would discharge within 2-4mins.

One thing I noticed was that the poor blade's cell was completely flat out of the box while the better one had a good charge in it. I presume that as with LIPO's these Li-ION batteries are supposed to have some charge in them before use so this seems like a good tell-tale sign as to whether one blade is faulty.

I would recommend people to simply ask whoever supplies their night blades to open the package prior to pispatch and check that both blades have some charge in them. Ideally it should obviously be Aligns job to do quality checks in the first place but I'm sure they will address this issue soon.

I'm certainly not put off as these blades as they seem very good provided you get a working pair.

[StatiC]

Last time I tested my Align black night blades for duration (Last December I think) I got about 1.5 hours too.

[aballen]

try charging them now.... my good blades are now bad after sitting for a few months...

[flyinfool]

Now is it just me, or does it seem that now that all of the night blades have lithium cells that blade reliability has gone right into the craper.

I have blades that are several years old with NiMh batteries in them and they are still working great, even after extended storage. It seems that the newer blades with the lithium cells go bad after a few months of sitting in a box waiting for the weather to warm up.

I like the old way better where you just ignore the blades till you put them on charge the day before you want to fly them again.
I can see now that I will need to be constantly pulling out these newer lithium blades all winter long and cycling the batteries to try to keep them from going flat.

OK, rant over for now.

[aballen]

yeah I think it is the lipos too... can you point me to any good nimh 450 sized blades?