Beware Revolver and lipos

Friday night was another one of my nights without any sleep, so there I was in the little shed working on the F104, and as I was going flying Saturday morning I thought I would top up the lipos in the revolver, could not need much as it had not flown since the last charge
So there I was sat in the chair next to the charger, maybe dozing when all of a sudden this horrible smell brought me to my senses, yes that's right the Lipo had gone up in flames and yes it was in the plane, so I yanked the leads out to break connection and grabbed the fire extinguisher, a co2 one we Ihave for the jets and gave it a good one burst into the fuselage were the lipos are, did not put it out but dowsed it enough for me to whip out the two lipos, they were fairly new ones
This is the result







Good job I was there, and I know I should have taken them out to charge, but I always top them up in situe,
Complacency sets in, when I gave it what for with the extinguisher it blew the burning embers down the fuselage and pinholes all the film, the amazing thing was it burnt completely away the carbon tube that the elevator servo wires run through, and did not harm the wires, the two plastic tubes the pull pull wires run through were melted
Never again :S

To be honest I always charge in situ, but, since I've had a couple of Lipos 'gas up' on me I now only charge the same day I'm going to fly. When I get back from the field I put them on 'storage' charge if I know they were pretty flat.
Seems to me you get way too many Lipo failures BB, time to get your charger checked out maybe?

Actually its not an old charger Klipy, and its not done a lot, it is i think the most expensive one Turnigy do with a separate power supply also Turnigy, it charges two batteries at a time, only after six months one side packed up working, the lipos are also Turnigy nano, im beginning to think or i have though the turnigy stuff is crap and i dont think ill be buying any more of their stuff, think its better to pay the bit extra and get quality, all the lipos i have had trouble with have been turnigy, i have lipos that i bought 2010 still working, but they are not from HK

It you go through the forums it appears Turnigy Nanotechs are not all they are cracked up to be. Apparently they will deliver their claimed C ratings but not so many times before seriously weakening.

deliver their claimed C ratings but not so many times before seriously weakening.
Hmm! I thought it was because they were being used in the very cold weather!
I've also got a Zippy 4 x 2200 that failed today. If was fully charged last night, but when in my Excalibur, it delivered power for about a minute, then began to 'sag'. The telemetry on the radio said the lowest cell was at 2.2v.
Landed pronto. Off load, the cell came up to 3.9v before the model landed, so plenty of power for the receiver.
BB - there is no fire extinguisher on this planet that will extinguish a burning lipo. As they burn, they generate their own oxygen, so are impossible to smother.
I suspect - in future - you will charge your lipo's on a concrete block away from anything flammable! (and keep them in a metal box with vent-holes, so if one decides to combust, the expanding gases will not make the container explode!)
:evil:

I'll reinforce Eric's comment above about CO2 being ineffective against a LiPo fire. I would also add that if you manage to put any fire out with CO2, you'll still need to cool down whatever it is that caught light after you stop applying CO2, otherwise what ever it is will re-ignite. CO2 on its own provides very little cooling, all it does is starve the fire of the oxygen required to support combustion.

And while I'm on my soapbox, LiPo's should be charged outside the model, not inside.

I did not say the co2 PUT OUT THE FIRE I said it doused it enough for me to get it out of the plane
I know it would not kill the Lipo fire but it sure as hell prevented the revolver from burning

Obviously problems with Turnigy then, I must say I've had a few Lipos inflate but I've been spared a fire.

Just to clarify something I put - above - My radio telemetry is set to report (verbally) the receiver pack voltage, and lowest cell voltage - every thirty seconds, so there is no need to fly to a timer, which cannot account for flying style anyway (ie pottering about or flat-out 'hairybatics'). So when my lowest cell is reporting 3.5 volts, it is time to land.
When I put 'off-load but before landing', that meant that the motor was stopped - the motor draws the most current (amps), and it is current load that causes the battery voltage to drop. Compared to a motor, the receiver and servos draw flea-power.

I bought 5 Zippy 5cell 5000 lipos for my foam F3A plane and one of them gave up after only a few flights, the other 4 are ok
i think the Zippy is far superior to Turnigy nanos
The lipos in the revolver were just receiver power through a sensor switch, two of them together so one court fire and destroyed the other one
I dont think there are that many jet people that remove the lipos while charging, as they are always tied in with plastic ties
But now the turbines are being sold with the turbine charging the lipo while in flight or just running, so where dose that put the remove before charge thingy

I'm back on my fave supplier again I have heard that the batteries from Bang Good and Gear Best are good value and reliable. No personal experience but the reviews are all good as far as I;ve read. Sale on at present so even better value. Now I'll put my tin hat on and duck for cover. ;

THE BLACKBIRD wrote: I dont think there are that many jet people that remove the lipos while charging, as they are always tied in with plastic ties
But now the turbines are being sold with the turbine charging the lipo while in flight or just running, so where dose that put the remove before charge thingy

Depends how high they are taking them Tony, ie what the voltage regulator is set at, about half way between storage and full would be my guess, no danger of over charging and low enough to put away for another day. The other thing of course is charging current, I expect the current supplied is just enough to improve the battery state but not the kind of charge we can put in on the bench.

I rest my case.
Available in all sizes from she bay. :woohoo:

I won't say those bags are no good - but - they are quite expensive one-time things. If/when a lipo inside cuts loose, the bag needs to be replaced.
I use an old ammo box made of steel, and also readily (usually) available on flea-bay.

This is the lipo in question, laying on the shed floor where i dropped it after whipping it out of the Revolver, now it looks to me that the blasts i gave it from the extinguisher put it out, as you can see it has not burnt the wood floor more than just a black stain, i just dropped it and concentrated on the burning model then gave the lipo another burst, but you are convinced it could not have put out the lipo