Killed my Aerovoltz battery

[fastj22]

So I finally get a weather window to test fly my new conventional gear conversion from tricycle, pull the plane out of the hangar, preflight her, jump in the cockpit and notice my master switch is on. Opps. Switch it off and on, and no sound from the contactor. Sinking feeling. Deader than disco.

No problem, when I bought that fancy Aerovoltz lithium battery, I also bought the fancy intelligent charger. So back in the hangar, cowl off, battery out. Charger says battery is dead. Well duh! No, its really bereft of life. It does a health check on the cells and they are bad. No can charge.

So to the iPad to read the manual.

It too says its kicked the bucket. If the battery is drained below 6V, it is damaged beyond repair and will not charge. Draining the battery below 6V voids the warrantee too. I now have a really nice looking paper weight, albeit only 2 lbs. I'll put it up on my shelf of broken dreams next to my dead parrot.

Good news is I still have my old Odyssey and battery box. I also was a bit tail heavy with the Aerovoltz (being only 2 lbs) and had considered swapping back to the lead battery to move CG a bit forward. But now I have to drain my fuel and do another W/B. I'll do that this afternoon as the Polar Vortex keeps me grounded at least till next weekend.

I really liked the Aerovoltz. It never needed charging, always spun the starter very fast, even after cold soaking. Oh well.

[Mike53]

Disco is dead?Ah good times.
Sorry to hear you killed your Aerovoltz.I did not know either that you could kill it beyond saving.I think when the time comes i will install some type of warning that the master has been left on.What are you asking for your intelligent charger if you would be interested in parting with it as I have only purchased the battery so far.You can contact me off-line if your interested in selling it.Thanks.
Mike Turrell

[fastj22]

The charger will still charge Pb and NiMH batteries as well as other Lithiums. I'll probably keep it. It has a nice maintenance feature that I haven't explored. Probably will since I'm going back 100 years in battery tech. I might pick up another Lithium at Airventure if they have a deal on them like when I bought mine.

I think I will just leave my strobe switch on all the time from now on. When the master is on, the strobes flash.

[Mike53]

I think I will just leave my strobe switch on all the time from now on. When the master is on, the strobes flash.

Great idea :!:

[Bryan Cotton]

Or wire the strobes to a breaker with no switch. You can still pull the breaker but generally won't.

[radfordc]

Lithium iron batteries are wonderful in almost all respects....except they won't tolerate being totally discharged. They have the interesting characteristic of holding nearly full voltage throughout the entire discharge cycle until they reach the very end of the cycle. At that point the voltage drops quickly to zero and the battery is damaged.

Unlike a lead acid battery, the voltmeter doesn't really tell you how much useful charge is still left in the battery. The only way to be sure the battery is not getting close to the dropoff point is to keep it fully charged after every use.

[Rynoth]

Are the batteries going in the same location? Could you not just do a W&B weight shift equation rather than re-weigh the whole aircraft?

[rizzz]

I’ve ordered the exact same battery but from ballistic performance:
http://www.ballisticparts.com/products/ ... 16cell.php

Looks like Aerovoltz sells the same 16 cell EVO2’s apart from the fact that they put a new label on them to make them “experimental aviation batteries”, interesting:
http://www.aerovoltz.com/av16.html

The price of the Aerovolts appears to be slightly higher though, you can buy the ballistic performance on ebay for $224, the extra $44 must be the extra cost of the label :-):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BALLISTIC-PERFO ... 1217203480

Anyway, good to know I need to keep the thing charged, sorry to hear about your mishap but I guess if you were planning to replace it with the Odyssey anyway, it’s not that bad.

[fastj22]

Are the batteries going in the same location? Could you not just do a W&B weight shift equation rather than re-weigh the whole aircraft?

Yeah, but rather than doing the math, I just reweighed the plane. Came in at 706lbs. My first weight after conversion came in at 689, so that's a gain of 17 lbs. I did have full dress this time. Pants, leg fairings, interior. The battery accounts for 10lbs of that.
My biggest challenge was when draining all the fuel to do the W/B, I got distracted and let one of the 5 gallon jugs overflow. I had a torpedo heater running and raw fuel going all over. Talk about a disco dance to get to the heater to turn it off, then the fuel flow. Had to open the hangar doors just get some fresh air.

[rizzz]

I think I just killed my 16 cell Ballistic Performance battery (same as the AeroVoltz), left the Mater Switch on, next day it was only reading 3.6V and would not re-charge,
However, I gave it 10 minutes connected to an old 12V laptop power supply which brought it back up to 9V, after that I connected it back to the car charger and was able to get it back to 13.5V.
We'll see it it holds the charge...

I'd like to order a new one but the 16 cell is not available anywhere for the moment. Neither in Ballistic or AeroVoltz brand.
I might try the 12 cell, it still has a higher CCA value than the PC625 Sonex recommends so it should be adequate.