15 minute battery life?

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5 flights now on a new and unmodified P2V+
All at ~12-13 minutes until low battery alarm @ 30% and no more than 15 minutes to 23-25% left at landing and shutoff.
Two different batteries through about 3 charging cycles each.

99% at takeoff, recording video the entire flight, light wind, good GPS lock, flying within 60 meters.

At first I thought it was the prop guards but I removed them which made no difference.
My takeoff weight is 1260g with the prop guards removed

Is this normal or common? Will the batteries improve after a few more charging cycles?
Anything I can do to improve flight time?

Oh, also, Is there any way to silence the low battery alarm once it goes off? I'm glad for the warning but it's annoying that it keeps going while I'm trying to land and even after landing and motor shut off.
 
cahutch said:
5 flights now on a new and unmodified P2V+
All at ~12-13 minutes until low battery alarm @ 30% and no more than 15 minutes to 23-25% left at landing and shutoff.
Two different batteries through about 3 charging cycles each.

I usually get to a minimum of 16 minutes before I hit 30%, with most of my flights reaching the 18-20 minute mark when I touch down at 12-15%. Your batteries are still new and they should continue to improve for the first 5-10 flights. You have a lot of battery left at 23-25%. Don't be afraid to run them a little longer, just remember when they hit your second battery warning (defaults to 15%) your Phantom will start to lose altitude. You can force it to remain up by pressing the left stick to >90% up.
 
Thanks DB. I was afraid to run them below 20% after reading up on the 80% rule for LiPo batteries.

I was also afraid it would drop to 15% quickly and land itself in a tree.
It drops from 30-25% in less than a minute so I figured 15% was only another 2 minutes away.

Good to know I can keep it airborne after 15%. I'll push it further next time and see how far it can go.
At what point will it fall out of the air?

No way to silence that alarm huh?
 
cahutch said:
Thanks DB. I was afraid to run them below 20% after reading up on the 80% rule for LiPo batteries.

I was also afraid it would drop to 15% quickly and land itself in a tree.
It drops from 30-25% in less than a minute so I figured 15% was only another 2 minutes away.

Good to know I can keep it airborne after 15%. I'll push it further next time and see how far it can go.
At what point will it fall out of the air?

No way to silence that alarm huh?

By the time you hit 15% you should be back at home point ready to land... keeping it in the air by throttle is just a method of draining the battery to keep it healthy on the bottom end... just hover in place and let the motors take the battery down low for you... you'll notice it hangs around 8% for a long time if you've never done it yet... I've flown mine all the way to zero several times with no problems at all... at 0% on the app , the battery still has well above 10 volts so it's not damaging the battery.
 
So what I'm gathering from this is that the computer is already accounting for the 80% rule, so I'm overcompensating.?
0% would be 9volts and 20% should be 11.2volts
If it's reading 0% at ~10 volts, there's already a safety margin, but it could be the battery rebounded back up to 10volts before you took the measurement.

Can you really keep it in the air all the way down to 0% on the meter?
 

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