LITCO ALPHA 4 FOR SALE

Four packs at once, of pretty much any size, doing all kinds of different things (charge, cycle, trickle, etc) at once, if desired.

It is a cool little beastie even if it is getting long in the tooth...

I've owned an A4 for almost 10 years now. As a wet flyer it's the only battery maintenance appliance I've ever felt I needed, but with almost a dozen flyable birds and a few transmitters the 4-ports is a highly desirable feature. And perhaps more importantly, the intelligence of the A4 won't leave you with a false "end of charge" indication that'd leave your plane dead on the flight line (if you were lucky).

Finally, fwiw, Peter isn't running a "lottery", as the nitwits would have you believe. The owner simply opens a window of buying opportunity, and the first n peeps that make contact within that window get the n units produced in that run.

bfd.

The same nitwits will only be satisfied if Peter sells out to Hobbico and they manufacture their units using Chinese prison labor...

/daytripper

Check out he Minron charger at this web site

Looks like a winner.

Greg

Rush......what rush? Litco would hardly be rushing to expand at this late date. They have been doing the lottery thing for years! I think they would fail economics 101 with their buisness model. Buy now they should have found a way to increese production without compromising quality.

I think the real problem is that the owner is too lazy to look into finding a solution. He's also too lazy to deal with sales tax, that's why he won't sell to people in his own state. And he's too lazy to upgrade the product. As was said above in this thread. The GP triton out preforms it in several areas like charge rate, (1 amp is pretty slow for a lot of things) cell count is very low, (most electric flyers would like to charge more than 10 cells). The ability to charge Lithium poly Ion cells is another thing the Triton does that the A4 can't.

The main advantages of the Litco are its multiple ports and the big wall wart. So, buy a Triton today and tomorrow when you need more charge ports buy another. If you wanna use it in your shop buy a power supply for it from sombody like Astroflight.

I had a Litco. It was nice, but it's limited cell count and low charge rate had me selling it a year after I got it.

Wiz

4 charge ports is nice but it can be a pain. Usually, I leave my RX batteries in the plane and it's not too convenient to gather several planes around one charger. I've owned a Litco, so I'm speaking from personal experience.

People aren't nitwits simply because they can't manage to win the Litco lottery and are vocal about it. Litco's way of doing business guarantees some people will miss a production run, maybe several. (I'm sure Red gets special treatment because of who he is.) Those who miss are naturally irritated about it. If they (Litco) don't like people getting frustrated and making disparaging comments about them they could do something about it.....they choose not to. Maybe THEY are the nitwits?

Wiz

Agreed, Bruce; the "lottery" does not strike me as an appealing way to do business, but it is the way Litco has elected to operate. Burt

You actually mean to tell me that you would risk losing a plane with a 10 year old battery pack? I'm sure glad we live in different parts of the county. ;>)

| You actually mean to tell me that you would risk losing a plane with a 10 | year old battery pack? I'm sure glad we live in different parts of the | county. ;>)

Now you're being silly.

A ten year old pack that has been occasionally discharged to measure it's capacity (and discarded if it looses too much of it) is arguably safer than a *brand new* pack that has never had it's capacity tested.

Discharging your packs fully (and therefore probably reverse charging a few cells) is bad, but discharging them to a reasonable voltage (like 1v/cell) occasionally (do it too often and you'll wear them out) to measure how much capacity they have is a very good thing. Chargers like the A4 (and many others) can make this very easy to do, and everybody should do it occasionally. It's cheap insurance.

As long as a battery pack keeps testing ok, there's no reason to throw it away. I don't think a 10 year old NiCd pack that tested ok yesterday is much more likely to fail than a 10 day old NiCd pack that tested ok yesterday.

(Now, if you can't/won't test your packs occasionally, then it makes sense to throw them out after a certain age. But in the long run, it's cheaper to take care of them and test them occasionally.)

Of course, any pack that tested ok today could completely fail tonight

-- with no warning. It's unlikely, but possible (usually they give some warning first.) This is why some people like to use two packs in one plane ...

| "Vance Howard" wrote in message | news:etAsb.54046$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net... | > I get my battery packs to last me 10 years and I don't need a $300 | > charger to do it. I've got a sub $100 cycler at home, and a 30 | > dollar field charger in my flight box, and see no reason to need | > anything more.

Me neither. :)

I recently bought one of these chargers at an estate auction. No one there knew what it was so I got it cheap. What I don't know is how old the charger is. So I sent an email off to Litco and asked them how to determine the revision and if mine wasn't up to date if it could be "upgraded".

Well their response puzzles me a bit. They said the chargers have not changed since they started making them 20 some years ago. If this is the case it seems the technology of battery management/maintenance has changed considerably in that time frame. Also were NiMH even around then? Yet the hype is these chargers are capable of NiMH. I would think in 20 years something would have had to change somewhere along the line.

I too think the system in which they take orders is a ploy to increase demand. Also the flavor of their website tries to make you think they are doing you a favor by letting you buy one of their chargers. And the remarks about permanently damaging the charger if you take the cover off, etc. etc. All of it together is just a lot of hype to market their product. I think it's a great charger but like others have said, it's nothing that isn't available elsewhere, just without all the ports. Which by the way, if you use all of them, you have 4

250mah chargers, that's the best you'll get.

Just my $.02 but that's probably too high a price....

rascal

The only thing that's changed in battery technology in the last 20 years is the introduction of the new types of batteries. Even though the A4 wasn't designed specifically to charge NiMH batteries, a couple of it's charger functions turn out to be very well suited to do so. See the FAQ on the Litco web site.

You have to understand the the A4 is totally software driven. It uses a programmable processor to do what it does the way it does it and there has been no reason to change the programming since it was introduced.

I had their original Litco "Multi Cycler" so I knew about the company already and bought an A4 within the first couple of months after it was introduced. I used it for close to 20 years and it worked just as well when I sold it to a friend (he just HAD to have one) as it did when it was new. I later signed up and got another new one to replace my original. My friend still uses his as his ONLY charger/cycler/maintainer. I then later signed up and got another one as a spare. If you don't understand how good the A4 is, it's because you haven't used it enough. If you really think that buying 4, 250ma chargers is the same thing as the A4, then you haven' t even read the instructions, let alone put it through it's paces and used it in the many ways it can be used.

MJC

I couldn't disagree with you more. Since a battery pack, at $30.00 represents .025% of the cost of a $1200.00 plane, it makes no sense to me to risk losing that plane with a ten year old pack. I have been flying for ten years. EVERY season, I see a minimum of one plane lost due to a battery problem.

Before I even buy a battery pack, I check the date code. If it's older than one year, I don't buy it. I write the date on it, and a control number that I enter in a book. The pack gets charged and cycled a minimum of three times before it even sees a plane (24 hour rest period between cycles) I have a Fluke 75 that has been calibrated that I use to verify all of my chargers and circlers. I check voltage between flights and cycle the packs once per flying season. (Flying season here goes from March to November) at the end of the season, the packs get removed from the plane and stored in the 'frige. After three seasons, that pack is no longer used in anything that leaves the ground.

If I can do any more to insure I don't have battery problems, I will do it. Bill

| I couldn't disagree with you more. Since a battery pack, at $30.00 | represents .025% of the cost of a $1200.00 plane, it makes no sense | to me to risk losing that plane with a ten year old pack.

Well, just by flying it, you risk losing it to a brand new battery pack. Your brand new battery, tested fine this morning, may fail in flight this afternoon. It's always a possiblity.

I've not seen old batteries that have cycled ok fail any more than new batteries that have cycled ok ... but if spending lots of money on your batteries makes you feel safer, more power to you.

The best protection, beyond taking care of your batteries, is to have more than one battery pack in your plane.

Also, your math is faulty. $30 is 2.5% of $1200, not 0.025%.

| I have been flying for ten years. EVERY season, I see a minimum of | one plane lost due to a battery problem.

(I assume that you're not talking about your own planes here.)

By far the most common battery problem that I've seen that has caused crashed planes has been forgetting to charge them, or getting in too many flights between charges :)

(Of course, according to some, I'm tempting fate by making my own packs nowadays. From `consumer grade' cells. With a soldering iron, soldering right to the cell. And I even use NiMH sometimes! Blasphemy!)

| Before I even buy a battery pack, I check the date code. If it's older than | one year, I don't buy it. ...

As long as it works for you.

When one of these things leaves the ground, a bunch of things can happen. All of them bad except one. With that said, trusting a plane to a ten year old battery pack doesn't make any sense to me.

With all of the precautions I take with batteries, I understand that something still could happen. If I lost a plane due to a failed battery, at least I could say that I did everything I possibly could to prevent it. I wouldn't want the discussion to go: Other pilot: "Why did your plane crash, Bill?" Bill: "Failed battery" Other Pilot: "Wow, how old was the pack?" Bill: "Ten years." Other Pilot: "You mean you trusted that $1200.00 plane to a ten year old battery? Are you nuts or just cheap?" Bill: "Well, gee, it cycled fine for the last ten years" (As Bill is shoving what's left of his plane in the trash barrells.

The information provided by the guys who work with batteries professionally and also fly RC is that a ten year old battery pack is, at the outside, six years past the point where is shouldn't be in anything that leaves the ground. I have never seen a properly conditioned new battery pack fail in use. I have seen PLENTLY of them fail due to old age.

All of my giant scale planes have two packs and switch harnesses.

What's a couple of decimal points among friends?

You assume correctly.

How many beginnger have charged their ailerons all night ;>)

I've done that too, seemed to work, once I figured out how not to get the cells too hot.

I'm not as bad as one guy in our group. He replaces all of his batterys every two years.

You are absolutely, totally, wrong. First, of all, time has significantly LESS impact on the condition of a pack than do other factors such as number of cycles, overly deep cycling, heat, etc. Secondly, battery packs almost never fail suddenly when they do fail. Pack failure is caused by the gradual breakdown of the internal chemistry of the batteries (with the only exception being a direct short in wiring). This means that if a user properly cycles the pack reasonably often (one or two times a month), he will get early indications of the packs coming failure by the lessening cycle times. Most people will use packs until the cycle to 80% of rated capacity, but I toss mine when they hit 90% of rated capacity. As long as your packs are returning 90% of their rated capacity (in my case), you can use them with confidence. BUT, again, you have to watch the other factors that affect battery condition. And time is not one of the more important factors.

MJC

"me" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@yvn.com...