This is a 4s uh, 18650 uh 3000 milliamp hour with the sony vtc six cells. So i purposefully left this testing out of that original video, because i knew that it would delay that video by a couple of weeks – and some of you guys wanted that information on just not not the long, i guess the the longest possible fight. So i left that out in that original video. But if you want to see the original video that’s kind of like more acro flying on this five inch, it’s going to be linked down in the video description and if you’re, just looking for something a little bit more fun and a lightweight five inch, not necessarily Under 250 grams because it isn’t and can carry a naked gopro, as you can see here then check out that video. But if you are waiting for the information on how long you fly for on this 18650 pack, well here’s the information so in the product page from the iflight website. They claim a flight time of 20 to 25 minutes and i would say, that’s fairly accurate and i would say the range is actually going to be even wider than that it’s going to be probably as little as 15 minutes and as perhaps as long as 30 Minutes and it’s really going to depend on your flying conditions so um when i was doing the test on a very windy day, uh, basically pretty bad.
Like 30 mile an hour winds, um yeah, i was getting probably 15, maybe a little bit more than 15 minutes of flight on this pack and on a calm day, uh good conditions. You can probably push it to almost 30 minutes on this pack. Also, you know: 30 minutes is kind of with a grain of salt as well, because you’re gon na have to push the quad to the point where it’s, where it might even just be falling on the sky, and i did not actually want to do that. So one of the things you got to do is if you are going to be flying on these 18650 cells. You are going to have to adjust the battery voltage settings in betaflight, and so i changed mine, the i changed the minimum voltage to 2.6 and the the warning voltage to 2.7 um. You could probably go lower. I think these can go to 2.5. You know there’s! No, the 3 000 milliamp hour rating for the amount of energy in here is, i think, all the way down to 2.5 volts, perhaps even lower. I didn’t go all the way to the point where it just fell out of skies. I i i didn’t really feel comfortable flying like that, and i think that if i were to use something like this on, you know in like a real flight on my own. I wouldn’t do that. So obviously you can push it to that point.
If you want and get maybe an extra two three minutes, but i felt like 2.6 – is probably the lowest. I would want to go now. What’S interesting is you know, as you know, there’s a lot of voltage sag on these packs. So as soon as you take off, you immediately drop about three tenths to four tenths of a volt and that’s. Just the nature of these um lithium ion cells, that’s pretty normal. So when i was uh getting down in the 2.6 volt range and obviously the buzzer is beeping at me, like crazy um, i went ahead and landed at 2.6 volts and when this battery recovered so obvious, obviously with no load on it, it’ll recover to a certain Voltage you’ve recovered up to 3.1 volts, so it’s pretty significant. That means there’s still energy in here in this pack, even after a 30 minute flight. So you could definitely go longer, but i i think that if you’re risking it, you can probably get another three minutes and it’ll just follow the sky i’m. Not sure if you want to do that, you know it’s up to you, it’s your choice but um yeah at 3.1 volts, given the fact that these cells can go down to 2.5 volts there’s. Definitely energy left in the pack, so again it’s your choice but um. I would say if you want to play it safe, i you know, given you know, depending on your conditions and how, when you think that you know basically where your pack was gon na die on you, i would definitely listen to the um voltage setting uh in Betaflight and i probably said 2.
6 or 2.7, knowing that you’re going to have some sort of voltage sag at the very end and be prepared to bring it in after it hits about three volts that’s. What i would do, uh you know from 4.2 volts to 3 volts you’re going to get about. You know under ideal conditions, probably 15 to 20 minutes, and then i would start looking at uh thinking about coming back in at about three volts and not really pushing too much beyond that beyond below three volts. You don’t have a lot of power at your disposal, like you, can’t really push the throttle too much and it’s very unresponsive, so it’s in my opinion, not that useful to fly below three volts anyway, and so you know, given the fact that they’re rating this at Three thousand milliamps to two and a half volts is really more like 2400 milliamps of actual usable battery voltage on something like this yeah. You can just kind of really like limp along at the very end if you need to, but you’re not going to have any reserve power for any sort of like if you need make any like corrections or something like that or if for, for example, if you Were flying upwind against the wind coming back, you’re going to be lacking a lot of power at the very end of this battery. Still, those are a lot of things you want to keep in mind. You know not just you know raw flight time, but also you got to keep you keep in mind the flying conditions that you’re in and the wind the wind’s going to play a big role.
You know definitely don’t fly downwind and then on your way back when the, when your battery voltage is really weak, fly upwind, because that you’re not going to have the power to make it and at the same time, when you’re flying against the wind, you there’s more Current draw on the battery and there’s even more sag, so i’m thinking that at some point, you’re just going to fall out of the sky. If you aren’t really careful about what you’re doing so be careful of what you’re doing when you’re using these kind of packs. When you’re going for their super long flights, all right so now you guys want to know how much this weighs with the 18650 it’s 467 grams, putting the gopro on here, it’s going to add another 30 grams. So if you’re wondering what that is it’s about 500 – and this particular pack here is about 200 grams, so i know some people were going to ask. How is this how’s this pack compared to the other ones that use the same sony cells, the vtc6 cells? Pretty much it’s identical uh. You know there’s slight variations in the battery lead here, which isn’t going to make that much difference that i could notice, but yeah there’s. You know other manufacturers like outline, i think frc flywoo. You know they all make their own packs from these same cells, so yeah since they’re the same cells assuming that they’re all all assembled fairly.
Similarly, which seems like the case, you would expect the performance to be pretty similar, and i found that to be the case, because i did previous testing on the other other brands, and i found the voltage sag. The power output um also the flight time to be pretty similar to this one. So if you’re wondering you know, is one brand better than the other, i would have to say. No, if you disagree, let me know down in the comments below if you have uh additional testing that can prove that to be different, but i haven’t seen anything that can show there’s any major differences between the different brands because they’re all using the same sony cells. All right, so the last thing was people wanted me to make a video how to set up the gps on here, because it isn’t out of the factory it’s like partially set up, which is kind of par for the course for a lot of these manufacturers. They do have instructions on the product page on how to set up a gps, so i would recommend just going with that: that’s it’s fairly straightforward. They show you all the settings, all the settings you have to make all the settings changes you have to make in betaflight. Also i did make another video on how to do basic gps setup on a different quad that wasn’t this one. I think it was the uh sector 5 from hdlrc it’s, going to be pretty much the same on, depending on which um quad you’re using uh.
So if you want to check out that video i’ll link that one down in the in the video description as well, it’s going to be it’s going to be fairly so i’m going to apply basically the same principles, this one and it’ll get you working. Okay, so that’s going to do it for this one.
