Some guys alligator clip to their car battery terminals.
The Imax B6 is probably the single most cloned/repackaged/added on to charger out there today. Drone guys use it, RC car guys use it, RC Airplane and heli guys use it......... I have two clones that I use for my RC hobbies and they've been active for over 10 years with zero issues.
Some of the clones are more reliable than others. "Comes with a power supply" can be a good thing or a bad thing. All you really need for rocketry charging and to power the chargers is the ability to make 12vDC at 1 or 2 amps, but RC guys like 10amp or better for larger packs. A simple wall wart is usually ok for rocketry, but for $10 or less you can get a corded box power supply like most laptops use that'll source 10 amps.
I have a converted blade server power supply that I use as a bench power supply (12vDC at 47 amps capacity), and for the field I have a modified cigarette lighter adapter so that I can charge at the launch, if necessary.....and I've never found it necessary!
Ultimately you're also probably going to want extender harnesses for charging your various batteries. You'll want ones that match your battery outputs as well as a 2S extender or a 'balance board'.
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I'm familiar with the looks that I'm sure you get, too! At one point I lucked into a tested lot of 20 power supplies, delivered, for $25.....so I made EVERYONE one and handed them out like tic tacs at a halitosis convention.....all everyone had to do was source their own AC cord.
LMAO! When I was heavy into RC and competing in IMAC all over the country I was converting them and selling them at cost. Much better and cleaner power than what I found you could buy retail. And charging a half dozen 5000mah 6S packs at once with a generator was fantastic. I saw the use of 9v batteries after I got back into rockets/dual deploy a year ago and wondered why the full jump to Lipo wasnt made in rocketry. Im guessing it is just due to the learning curve if you aren't use to them from something like RC and there is a fire risk if you make a mistake.
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yep, i am using some of those myself. Never had an issue with turnigy or zippy lipos. I also found some 2S 30C from venom on Amazon when HK was out of stock that are tiny squares rather that the flatter/wider zippy/turnigy. They have worked great as well.Yep! I think it's just the learning curve, in general. Those of us who came over from NiCad/Nimh batteries into first gen Lipo tech have a familiarity advantage, as we made all the real costly mistakes early on and can easily warn folks and provide 'best practice' lessons without fires or failures.
These are my go to rocketry and tracker batteries, 99% of what I'm launching has one or more of these for various things, depending on size and needs.
The only thing is with the Losi connectors, you have to be sure that you change over the pins to whatever configuration you're using (which is simple).
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I did an experiment a few weeks ago with a new RRC3. 10ish minutes of pad time, 3 minutes of flight, and about 20 minutes of recovery and walk back to the truck and turned it off......6mah put back into the battery!
That 750mah battery once powered my RTX transmitter for 4 days, even though the manual says ~10 hours.....and it recharged without issue.
How hard is it to change over a USB port on a board like that?
I just looked through my spare parts bin and found I had a bunch of them
I have the same one and it works great. As stated I had to do extensive research before buying it from Amazon. At the time Hobby King had the identical one for much more.I own a SKYRC iMAX B6AC V2 and it works very well for my needs.
I purchased it on Amazon but I had to research all the sellers, as the iMax is heavily cloned and most of those are junk.
I've had this idea of changing the connectors on my batteries in the back of my mind for some time now, but haven't gotten around to doing it (yet). I'd personally like to standardize on a legitimate (i.e. not a Chinese knock-off) vendor's latching connector - something similar to the mini-Tamiya connector - on the battery and electronics-bay end of things. Maybe the Molex mini-fit family.
While I like molex mini fits and have used them in a variety of industry projects.......the simpler and cheaper solution is Deans micro.
I'm sure they're solid connectors, but I really want a latching connector. Different philosophies I suppose.
