Duralite Regulated System Review

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Duralite Regulated System Review
Review by Darren Clark

Having run my models on large capacity four cell Ni-CD and Ni-Mh for many years now I decided to convert to the increasingly popular regulated voltage set-up. I already use a Duralite voltage regulator and Polycell Li-Po battery on my Turbine powered Fury Extreme so thought it was the logical next step to convert my two 90 size glow engine models. There are a couple of systems out there on the market today, the most popular two systems at present being the aforementioned Duralite Regulator and the Fromeco 'Arizona' Regulator system. I decided to stick with what I already knew and opted for two full Duralite systems.

Unlike an unregulated system where the initial battery voltage may start at 5.3v and steadily reduce to, say, 4.8v after a few flights, the regulated system remains constant so long as the battery can supply the required voltage. This means that your radio gear and servo's perform at the same level no matter whether you are on your first flight or your sixth flight of the day and your helicopter should perform at the peak of it's ability every flight. Unlike the pilot :-)
 

Wanting to squeeze as much performance out of my radio system as possible I opted for two Duralite 4000mAH Li-Ion batteries, two Duralite 6v heavy duty 7.5 amp regulators with digital fail safe switch, two Duralite 5.1v step down leads and a Duralite charger with four outputs.

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Duralite 4000mAH Battery The battery pack is of a 7.4v, 4000mAH, 2S2P flat pack configuration in that is has a redundancy feature by having four cells in total. (Part number: PPD-7404FL). The pack comes with two leads, one with a yellow servo style plug for charging and another with a standard black servo style plug to connect to the regulator. The pack also contains it's own Stay Balance Charge Safe Circuitry™ through which the charging lead connects. This circuit protects the cells by constantly balancing them and also protects against over charging. Total weight of the pack is around 204grams which is comparable to a large capacity Sub-C Ni-Mh pack. Duralite 6v Regulator The 6v, 7.5 amp heavy duty switched regulator is part number PPD-65060-HD. The regulator itself is very small (around 25mm x 25mm x 55mm) and comes complete with the heavy duty Futaba style fail safe switch attached. The regulator has a large heat sink and RF filters on the leads in and out of it. There are two leads from the regulator itself, one for the battery and one to the receiver power. The third lead coming from the other side of the switch is for 1 amp load testing your battery capacity only - don't mistake this for the power lead to the receiver! Duralite also make 5.1v and 5.3v regulators both with or without the fail safe heavy duty switch. (Part numbers: PPD-65051 and PPD-65053 respectively). Duralite Voltage Step-down The Duralite Voltage Step-down (Part number: PPD-55053) is required when using a 6v regulator to step down the voltage for the tail servo. This is a short (6.75" and 0.2oz) lead which drops the voltage from 6v to 5.1v. It simply installs either between the receiver and gyro or the gyro and tail servo depending on the rating of your gyro. Duralite Battery Charger I opted for the four output charger (Part number: PPD-21070) as Duralite only recommend the use of their chargers for their batteries. Charging with other brand chargers will void your warranty. This charger has four 7.4v outputs allowing for charging four receiver packs simultaneously. The charge rate is only 400mAH/hour which means it takes over 6 hours to fully charge a 4000mAH pack so you must plan ahead. It is supplied with a 12volt input lead with two crocodile clips and four output leads with yellow servo style connectors to attach to the battery pack lead. It couldn't be simpler to use - just connect everything up and a green light comes on to tell you it's charging and goes off when the pack is fully charged!

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Fitting & Installation

I chose my Raptor 90SE as the initial test bed for the installation so began by removing the 3300 mAH Ni-Mh pack that I had been using along with the heavy duty Futaba switch. The Duralite system is fitted following the diagram below. Of course if you are using a 5.1 or 5.3v regulator you would omit the 5.1v step down between the gyro and tail servo.

The switch is identical in size to the standard Futaba heavy duty item so was fitted in the standard location to the radio tray. The Li-Ion battery was mounted on foam and sat on the bottom of the radio tray with rubber bands to hold it in place. Above this the receiver, inside a protection case, was sat on more foam with the Futaba GY-601 amplifier sat on top. My Futaba GV-1 governor was placed at the front of the radio tray with the Duralite regulator sat just above that. The regulator should not be hard mounted with tie wraps so was just rubber banded in place along with the rest of the radio gear taking care not to obstruct the cooling vents at either end. The pictures below show the finished installation.

       

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Initial set-up and flying

The installation was quickly done and does not really take up any more room than before with the Ni-Mh set-up. There were just a few more wires to make sure were not chaffing anywhere on the helicopter but other than that it was a simple conversion. There is a slight advantage in weight saving over a large Sub-C Ni-Mh pack and this could be improved upon even further by going for one of the slightly smaller 3200mAH or 2800mAH capacity Duralite Li-Ion packs. The downside of that of course being a reduction in the number of flights per charge.

Overall the helicopter felt much more agile and quick to respond to inputs made but then you would expect that when running on 6.0v rather than 5.1v. I'm sure even running just a regulated 5.1v or 5.3v set-up would improve the feel of the helicopter and there would be no noticeable deterioration in performance from one flight to the next. I can fly for a full day without the need to 'top-up' the battery at the field before reaching it's recommended stop-fly voltage of 6.9v tested with a 1 amp load. All this means less charging and more flying - what more could you ask for?

And finally....

There is definitely an advantage to be gained here over using high capacity Ni-Cd or N-Mh cells so it is a worthwhile investment but only if you are seriously committed to flying RC helicopters as unfortunately it is not the cheapest way of powering your onboard radio gear!

The second Duralite battery, regulator and voltage step down is waiting patiently to be fitted to the Synergy N9 kit which I will hopefully be building and flying not long after the 2006 3D Masters. Check back at a later date for a review of this new model.

Now where's my credit card as I need another set-up for the trusty Raptor 50 too now........