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Well done Kermit, you never cease to entertain. Cant believe La Frog is still in one piece or do we have a sewing session between each take.
Hopefully you are now back to full health.
The Princess got its hull wet for the first time just before lock down occurred here, it had waited patiently in dry dock for many years. Two of my grand kids were coming to visit us down south for 4 days and my grandson wanted a power boat and yacht to play with. As usual it was a last minute rush to get them sorted. The Princess was quickly outfitted with no thought of waterproofing apart from mounting the Rx up high. My grandson got the first skippering of it and I told him to back off a bit on the turns. Not the thing to say, I based it on my previous experience with a power boat, a tunnel hull which you had to back off on the turns or risk flipping it. Not so in the case of the Princess, when you backed off the throttle it lost steering as the small rudder lost authority as the speed decreased and the waves took over. My error and proved a bit expensive but he enjoyed himself so life was good. As you can see in the video there was plenty of opportunities for water to get in, especially so when the screws holding the top hatch on vibrated out and the hatch came off.
Unfortunately the weather was not great when they were down so we only got this run in on the last day they were down with us. And after that run it was history.
A couple of days later the weather was perfect and it would have gone really well. Tried the yacht but the wind decided to back off and got some great footage of it bobbing up and down on the slight swell but going no where.
No problem I thought when we get back I will take it up the lake to give it its first sail but as we all know that is on hold for some time yet.
Hope everyone is well and hopefully a sailing video in the future.
This something I wrote for a woodwork group re a couple of 18V Li-ion tool packs I just about gave up as duds. May be of interest but if you are not confident about the method consult someone who is.
Li Recovery
When Masters was closing down I wanted more Triton Li 18v batteries. The cheapest way to buy them was in kit form with one or more power tools. These kits were in the most part cheaper than just buying the battery. I ended up with a couple of torches which I used the 1.5AH batteries on.
This one was kept in the house in a draw and has been used a few times over the years. Needed to use it a few months ago and it was flat. OK put it on the plug pack charger and see what happens, well nothing, after 24hrs it showed no sign of life. Put it down to a physical failure and put it aside to look at one day.
A few weeks ago noticed it and decided to strip down the battery pack and see if I could see anything broken. Stripped it down and measured the voltage across each cell (5 for 18v). Each cell was approx 35mV (35/1000 of a volt). That is that I said to myself as normally any Li battery below approx. 3V can be damaged and not be recharged.
As all the cells were of equal voltage decided to bypass the battery management electronics and direct charge the cells to see what happened. NEVER do this unless you understand the risks and implications of this and NEVER leave the pack charging unattended. Two houses have burnt to the ground due to faulty battery charging of Li batteries in power tool products in the last few months in WA. Controlled the voltage and current going into the cell pack so as not to stress them. After 5 mins disconnected the charger and measured the individual cells and they were all the same at around 1v. So reconnected and continued on until the cell voltage was around 3V.
Reassembled the pack and connected to Triton plug pack charger. It was now happy to continue charging to full. To test the battery I plugged it into the torch and left it turned on for 5 hrs making sure the battery meter on the pack still showed at least one light. Put it back on charge and it recharged no worries.
To say the least I was very surprised this pack came back to life. If it is OK time will tell.
Was not sure what happened here initially, the battery management system should have disconnected the power to the torch when it reached it minimum battery voltage reference 3V ?? thus saving the battery. This you would have noticed with Li batteries, there is no taking them to flat like a NiMh battery, when they reach the min voltage the power tool stops as the BMS disconnects the battery from its tool connection pins and wont reconnect until you have charged the battery.
What I think has happed in my case is the grandkids have been playing with it and put it back in draw turned on. As the torch is a low current device I am assuming the battery management system failed to turn off and the torch drained the batteries to effectively be dead flat. Just my assumption.
A week later I went to use an Ozito Li 18V battery. As it had not been used for a while put it on the charger but came up with and error. Oh well out with the Torx driver. In this case 4 cells were 3.2V with the 5th at 2.4V. In this case I only charged the low volt cell up to 3V. Then reassembled the battery and connected to its charger and it fully charged. Used it on a sprayer for 5 tank fills and it ran and recharged no worries. How it will go just sitting around I don’t know. The low volt cell could have a different resistance than the others and will discharge to a lower voltage over time than the others.
Was lucky they came back as in most cases they would be history and for disposal, still might be. As I said previously only time will tell if it is just a short term gain.
Another project was to create universal all in one charge leads for my chargers. These will charge 2 and 3S (90% of the packs I use), NiMh car packs and with an addition short adaptor cable the other type of batteries I have.
Text was visible again????????
Pred when adding the photo to the above report I could not get the text to display at all. Just waited a while and pressed ok and it imported. Before doing that report I cleaned up all my links, cookies etc. Was not much as It is done fairly regularly. Will let you know what happens next report.
The reason I decided to move out all my batteries was from seeing reports on the news re hobby batteries catching fire while on charge. I never leave my batteries on charge unattended but decided to move them just to eliminate any perceived risk in my mind. The most common fires I have seen are toy heli’s, quads and hover boards. I am suer cars/trucks would be in there as well. All the batteries and chargers I have bought have very clear warnings on them.
Of course this has not removed all the LI batteries from under the main roof as just about anything electrical in the house will run off or use LI batteries for backup these days. A number of well know brands have had recalls because of fire risk but minimal on the total number sold. looking into these devices there are very complicated circuitry to manage battery condition. But even the best get it wrong sometimes. Looking inside a 18V drill battery you will find a very complicated circuit board on a lot of them. Of course also built in there is a memory chip they can use in a warranty claim to see how you have looked after it.
A few months after I sorted my batteries there was two reports close together of two houses burning to the ground over here. Both initially were blamed on charging batteries overnight. Never saw anymore info on them. One was a drill and the other a lawn mower. There may be some very crucial facts missing from that initial report like maybe the drill was dropped from a great height and suffered some mechanical damage which was not obvious on a cursory inspection. Who knows but it was not the toys this time.
That opens up another situation where I store all my power tool batteries in my shed. All I can do in that case is not leave them on charge unattended. I dont mean sitting on them but be within the vicinity.
There are many other causes of house fire, electrical faults, electrical appliances etc, they are at the very low end of risk so apart from maintenance and replacement.
On this forum I am talking to the educated but a reminder occassionally does not hurt.
Thanks Pred, that was the problem. Not sure what has changed as I have not had this problem in the past, just something to store in the memory banks.
Have updated original post with photos
Thanks Pred. To check I was doing it correctly went back and watched your how to video.
This where I get to.
Click on photo icon
Opens picture select box
Click on browse
Select picture
Click on open
Goes back to select picture box.
Should show please wait until file is loaded but this remains blank.
Will try my laptop later today to see if that is different.
Thanks Rob
Thanks for the reply Pred. The photos I was using had been reduced to 1080×810 (175kB) using the resize option in the menu for windows Photo. Not sure why I choose 1080, probably because you see it every where. Tried to add photo again but would not load. So resized photo to 1024x 768 (163kB) but that also wont load. Will try again in the morning.
Hope all are well and coping with this lock down. Not sure I am, normally one to stay in the back ground but to be told you have to is another thing. Have to, both of us can not afford to be exposed to it.
Well summer has well and truly gone and not a hull wet, oh well that’s the way it goes, to many other things in life to take care of.
But I did eventually sort out my battery storage situation. Most of my hobby batteries Li and Ni are stored in supposedly fire proof bags but I have not been happy with just that as they are stored in a room under the main roof of the house. Pretty hard to explain to my wife that we lost the house due to my hobby. Would not be the first to have to do so.
So all the batteries came out on the back table and I proceeded to test them. Forgot I had so many. The Li batteries were given a discharge test and then taken up to storage charge, most came through with flying colours but a few did not and were disposed of. Took a week or so to do but at least it gave me a reference to what I had. The big test for them will be in a boat to see their true condition.
The Ni packs were similarly tested and fully charged. About 20% of the packs failed and have been put aside to investigate each cell under load to see which are faulty. Interestingly the main ones that did not come up to scratch were the ones used as Tx power supplies. Not sure why, maybe the load is pretty low and they did not get exercise.
So all the batteries are in flame proof?? Bags and stored in a weather proof box away from the main house under cover. Not sure how it will go, they will be subject to more extremes in temperature and humidity than where they were before, so see what happens. I realise that grouping them altogether could be asking for trouble but if they all go up and damage nothing else but themselves I still have a house. Will just keep an eye on it.
The ones that are up for testing and those that past the test, interesting my very first Turnigy LSD 10+ years old came through with flying colours.
Cant seem to attach photos at the moment, will try later.
To be checked
Passed
Speedy recovery Kermit. Will miss your view on the days sailing/flying. Always good for a different view of the days proceedings.
Now owned by Russian interests according to latest reports. Does that mean a new better yacht commissioned or just too expensive to keep on the books.
Thanks to all who put in the hard work writing up and photo/videoing your races at the duck. Enjoy having a read each week of the days racing. Seasons greetings from WA or should I say the furnace, see the eastern states are now going to get the same. Hope you guys in Tas don’t get too much of it. Not sure but from the results over the last few months I have seen the green machine practicing finishing at the front end, maybe a new years resolution..
There are lots of instances of this, mainly toy RC vehicles being charged by kids and not understanding the dangers. The parents also are amazed that a small model can cause so much damage.
There was an instance over here a few years ago when a very experienced flyer charged his batteries in his expensive plane. Not something he normally does but he was running out of time. He always stayed around while on charge but this time his daughter came out to get some help with a DVD playing. By the time he got back to his garage he could not get in the door. Lost his garage and all his gear, luckily the fire brigade saved the house. Why it happened is unknown but it can.
At the moment I have my LiPo’s in fireproof bags but that takes a bit of room. Thinking of using metal boxes, vented, I think will be more space efficient. Had a look at a number of YT videos and there seems to be two schools of thought. How do you store yours?
