Mah resitrictions

[jaike5]

Hi Terry, I'm with yuh on the dunk'n thing !! mine are marked with a sharpie . Dig out your old triple beam weed scale and weigh the packs, any suspects charge them up and check with multi meter, any problems your out of the class for the weekend. Pain in the ass I know, If everyone knows your checking 1st, 2nd, 3rd. should keep everything on the up and up.
prop down for offshore will keep you out of the single digits for the % left in your packs.
Cheers, Jay.

[Doug Smock]

Looking forward to it Tyler. Good luck this weekend!

[RaceMechaniX]

Doug, We'll cross paths at another venue now that I am on the East Coast.

In gas/nitro/FE open offshore run at a district level you can pretty much run your full 6-lap set-up with full power. Race duration may be around 2-3 minutes. It's hard on the batteries, but I would argue not as hard as a timed 4 min race.

In regards to NAMBA 4 min FE offshore (excluding P-ltd) it is very much a balance of trying to get maximum efficiency from your power system and boat with hopefully a little left over in the cells to avoid severe degradation. Running 4 minutes with the same set-up as you normal heat race boat will kill the batteries around the 3 min mark (from experience). Most guys and gals who race FE offshore have specific boats with reduced power systems or smaller props that reduce current draw. I would estimate most of them come back with single digit % left in the cells(I do). Don't get me wrong, it is a great challenge trying to make a boat survive 4 min with very equal boats without completely destroying cells. I recall the NAMBA FE nats back in 2012 in Michigan where one diehard racer must have destroyed two or three pairs of batteries in multiple offshore classes trying to beat the competition.

Everyone to my knowledge likely runs the maximum 10Ah(N2,P and Q) or 12Ah(for S and T) in the offshore classes. If NAMBA allowed free capacity limits, I believe most would add another 5Ah maybe more to the hulls to be more powerful. The extra weight would not be such a penalty if you had more capacity.

-Tyler

[Doby]

In my experience, people win the majority of the races not because they have a bigger gas tank and can pull more consistent voltage out of the LiPos.....

Its because they can set up there boats properly and DRIVE!!!!! (Luck helps as well)

[Doug Smock]

Agreed Darin. Good to hear from you on this Paul, would like to hear more.

Hey Terry, glad you didn't say you. lol Yes, we are ALL in this together.

You, we, lol, (it shouldn't be this complicated) can run offshore in the IMPBA, just don't have specific FE offshore rules.
I'm not understanding why not having capacity limits is a problem for offshore. I would think that no capacity limits would solve more problems than it creates.
Personally, I'd be worried about the pitting next to a guy that is charging the cells that he just "pissed off",again.

I lack offshore experience, what have I missed?

Thanks fellas.

[Darin Jordan]

Having raced to Naviga rules with LiPo weight restrictions for years, I would advise against going that way, even though it is the only way that can be realistically teched.

I think this might be why the IMPBA just doesn't have any limits. They aren't REAL limits if they can't be tech'd, and, frankly, they can't be accurately.

[NativePaul]

Having raced to Naviga rules with LiPo weight restrictions for years, I would advise against going that way, even though it is the only way that can be realistically teched.

[Darin Jordan]

Not pushing this, one way or the other, but it should be part of the discussion to consider that actually TECH'ing the current NAMBA mAh limits isn't practical, or even possible, at all but the most well-equipped racing venues. I doubt anyone other than Tyler, and maybe one or two others, actually has the correct equipment to do it fairly, and I think it would be a laborious process...

Just Sayin'

[T.S.Davis]

Not interested in addressing a problem that doesn't exist.

Agreed Doug but is it possible that it's not an issue for IMPBA because WE (almost said you) don't have offshore?

You can run offshore in limited with 1P but you can't run do it in P or Q or even N2. I wont run P mono on 1P. Not because it isn't possible but because the cells get all pissed off about it when I do. I would prefer them to last a little longer.

[T.S.Davis]

Yeah but how do I prove it Jay? Say I dunk my batteries repeatedly. I do by the way. The labels get sacrificed when I peel the shrink to dry them out properly. I go to a race with my exactly 10k worth of 4s2p and stomp the crap out of everyone. How do I prove to a CD or a protest committee that I'm legal?

For that matter, lets say a racer has what appear to be the right stickers on his batteries. They say 4s/5000 on the labels. He stomps everybody. Someone protests because they are convinced he's cheating. How does a CD prove that someone is not legal?

Right now there is a difference between the two orgs rules. I don't like that there is a divide. A solve? I don't know.

[Doug Smock]

"If any changes are made to either organizations battery spec can we please have a conversation about keeping them similar? I don't care if it's just the IMPBA chair calls the NAMBA chair and they cook up something sane".

I hear you, really do.

I don't expect to see a change in battery spec. in the IMPBA until the HV cells go mainstream. A quick update of the safety rules by the BOD and it's done. Capacity limits? Not interested in addressing a problem that doesn't exist.

My hope is that if we put something in place in NAMBA, it will be something that can, and will be teched. Why bother otherwise?

[jaike5]

So if 5500mah are allowed in 2,3,4,5,6s, in a 2p set up, 2000mah extra is quite an advantage , or even more with miss labeling. And yet again buy more batteries to keep a level playing field. Keep the max at 10k mah prop down for offshore.

Cheers, Jay.

[Darin Jordan]

Just to put in my $0.02... I've looked at a LOT of battery curves and loads over the past couple of years. I can definitively tell you, with data to clearly back it up, that more mAh means more loaded voltage. It's that simple. The more you have, the less voltage suppression you get. There may be a practical limit. I'm not sure, but there certainly is a benefit to more.

Nothing shows this more clearly than on my 1-Cell SAW setups. I self limited my setup to 5000mAh, to try to keep in the spirit of how the Europeans run their events (battery cell weight limits), so I could see how my performance would compare. NO extra solder joints, no extra wire, etc... Just on cell, a + and a - tab, and a power system.

NOW, I will also say that having the DEFINED limits that we presently do makes it hard to find cells sometimes... 5000's aren't the "norm" out there, where the RC CAR/TRUCK market drives things, and they keep creeping the sizes up... 5300mAh, 5700mAh... etc. So finding combos can be difficult.

Bottom line, though, is that more mAh means more Voltage under Load, which means more speed. That's just the way it is.

[rayzerdesigns]

I have no problems with the mah limit but thats me.. In plim offshore i can burn 8000 mah.. And in p offshore i have to prop down to come in at 2% left..but thats the fun of it

[T.S.Davis]

Just went back and read some of those old posts. It was a dark hateful time for FE. We all typed some mean spirited crap. Interesting that some of names that were the most belligerent then still are. The same abrasive rhetoric from some members of the racing community back then can be found here too. It's also really sad. We've lost some good people since I've been playing with toy boats. Some quit. Some have passed on. I'm grateful that FE racing survived. I'm also thrilled that I'm not the chairman.

One thing that I caught that I posted back 8 or so years ago was that I was against anything that I thought would further divide FE. I'm a member of both organizations. I race with both organizations. If any changes are made to either organizations battery spec can we please have a conversation about keeping them similar? I don't care if it's just the IMPBA chair calls the NAMBA chair and they cook up something sane. Just so long as they are similar. Discuss it privately on the phone with people those guys trust. Whatever. Just keep them similar. Re-thinking setups is a nuisance.

I'm okay with multiple organizations. When in Rome, hang out with some Romans.

"Oh, you're in Rome? Go find some Chinese people to hang out with"
"There are almost no chines people in Rome so I guess I'll just stay in my room"

Makes no sense.

Having a different rule structure for each organization is stupid. Maybe "stupid" is too harsh. Okay, how about foolish? It would be different if we had car racing numbers but we're a tiny population that actually wants to race. We have to stick together.