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Thought I would share with you guys some testing with my Phantom 1.1.1 stuffed into a Phantom 2 shell and the Turnigy Multistar 5200 man 4S 14.8V battery I've been using lately. I tested it to exhaustion in this video and got a significant improvement in flight time.

I usually get 11 minutes of safe flight time using my Turing Multistar 5200 mAh 3S 11.1V battery. By Safe Flight time I mean that I still have enough battery to get back to wherever I am before the battery hits a auto landing point.

With the 4S battery my flight time has increased to 18 min 30 seconds to auto landing, so I figure I should be able to get 15 minutes of Safe Flight time out of this battery. And this is with aggressive flying as I use the Phantom to keep up with boats moving at up to 23 mph.

I've always seen people posting that you shouldn't use a 4S battery in the Phantom1 but I don't seem to have an issues as yet using it. Granted I have only done three flights so far to figure out how far I can push the battery.

Hope this answers some questions for all of you thinking about getting a 4S battery for your Phantom 1!!



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Cool, it’s pretty much about Watt hours (Wh) when it comes to battery packs. That 5.2Ah 4S bricks contains nearly 77Wh of energy. The same Ah in 3S voltage is a little under 58Wh. A difference of about 25% increase in capacity. 25% weight penalty but that's to be expected.

The other part is that wiring and circuitry may operate more efficiently at higher voltage range so that will also minimize losses.

Motor ESC is basically a voltage convertor so as long as the ESC power MOSFET devices and electrolytic capacitors have enough maximum voltage rating to survive 16.8V hot off the charger, it should not harm anything. I really dunno the components used by DJI but I’m very curious?

As a data point - my loaded P1 with big props sees between 12-14 minutes of no worries when pulling an average of 4Ah from a dual 3S battery setup.
 
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Very nice result. If it didn't fail on first flight, it probably won't fail in the future. Although I guess it is conceivable that the board/escs are under more stress.
 
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Thought I would share with you guys some testing with my Phantom 1.1.1 stuffed into a Phantom 2 shell and the Turnigy Multistar 5200 man 4S 14.8V battery I've been using lately. I tested it to exhaustion in this video and got a significant improvement in flight time.

I usually get 11 minutes of safe flight time using my Turing Multistar 5200 mAh 3S 11.1V battery. By Safe Flight time I mean that I still have enough battery to get back to wherever I am before the battery hits a auto landing point.

With the 4S battery my flight time has increased to 18 min 30 seconds to auto landing, so I figure I should be able to get 15 minutes of Safe Flight time out of this battery. And this is with aggressive flying as I use the Phantom to keep up with boats moving at up to 23 mph.

I've always seen people posting that you shouldn't use a 4S battery in the Phantom1 but I don't seem to have an issues as yet using it. Granted I have only done three flights so far to figure out how far I can push the battery.

Hope this answers some questions for all of you thinking about getting a 4S battery for your Phantom 1!!

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Using 33% more voltage than the circuit is designed for would make me think twice before trying it...

Would there be any downside to putting a BEC in the circuit to drop the voltage back to 11.1v?
Does doing so generate any power wasting heat?... maybe the right type of BEC could even mitigate any such power loss?
 
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Cool, it’s pretty much about Watt hours (Wh) when it comes to battery packs. That 5.2Ah 4S bricks contains nearly 77Wh of energy. The same Ah in 3S voltage is a little under 58Wh. A difference of about 25% increase in capacity. 25% weight penalty but that's to be expected.

The other part is that wiring and circuitry may operate more efficiently at higher voltage range so that will also minimize losses.

Motor ESC is basically a voltage convertor so as long as the ESC power MOSFET devices and electrolytic capacitors have enough maximum voltage rating to survive 16.8V hot off the charger, it should not harm anything. I really dunno the components used by DJI but I’m very curious?

As a data point - my loaded P1 with big props sees between 12-14 minutes of no worries when pulling an average of 4Ah from a dual 3S battery setup.


Thanks for the info!
 
Very nice result. If it didn't fail on first flight, it probably won't fail in the future. Although I guess it is conceivable that the board/escs are under more stress.
Had about three flights so far to test out my max flight times and no problems yet. Plan on doing some filming over water soon do hoping that I don't discover a problem then! Thanks for the vote of confidence!
 
Using 33% more voltage than the circuit is designed for would make me think twice before trying it...

Would there be any downside to putting a BEC in the circuit to drop the voltage back to 11.1v?
Does doing so generate any power wasting heat?... maybe the right type of BEC could even mitigate any such power loss?

I know what you are saying. I accidentally bought this battery 9 months ago when I thought it was a 3S. I've never flown it until this video. I was hesitant about it but after three flights so far all of which have lasted about 17 to 18 minutes I'm feeling more confident and actually interested to see how big of a 4S battery I can squeeze into that P2 battery bay.

I've seen a 5800 in there but I'm curious if I can shove a 6200 in there. We'll see.
 
I know what you are saying. I accidentally bought this battery 9 months ago when I thought it was a 3S. I've never flown it until this video. I was hesitant about it but after three flights so far all of which have lasted about 17 to 18 minutes I'm feeling more confident and actually interested to see how big of a 4S battery I can squeeze into that P2 battery bay.

I've seen a 5800 in there but I'm curious if I can shove a 6200 in there. We'll see.

I tried this before early on with the Turnigy batteries. I got the wrong one much like you did. I can definitely tell you that you get more performance with the 4s battery. When I used the 9 inch props, the motors would get hot, but the 8 inch props the motors would not get so hot. It is doable, but you have to ask yourself if you want the motors to last long or shorten the time between servicing the motors. It looks like you are having a good experience, but maybe you can test for yourself the difference in heat with the 8 and 9 inch props on the motors. In the end I chose to go back to a 3s as I was not completely sure how long the phantom would last running on the 4s battery. Let me know your results.:)
 

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