are multiplex radios any good?

These scorpion Lipo deals may actually be in stock sooN!!!!!!!!!
If I order up a 3200 pack and the scorpion charger I should be set as far as everything to use the packs, and it has built in LVC along with the protection in the charger correct? It looks like my best bet for only $210 total.

Where do you buy Lipos from?

I buy my lipos and the majority of my R/C stuff from my local shop/track. It's always good to support the place you visit, especially if you want to keep visiting :)
The best places I have found online for FMA/Kokam are Tower Hobbies and Horizon Hobby. Before I buy I normally check both websites for pricing and availability. For the higher-ticket items you can usually find an ad number for Tower to get approx 10% off at any given time. You usually have to spend between $50 and $200 to be able to use an ad number with them. Horizon doesn't often put items on sale, but when they do they will beat Tower's price regularly. I bought my Kokam 3200 20C packs through my local shop (through Horizon) because they were almost $10 cheaper than Tower at the time, but I bought my Duratrax ICE charger directly from Tower because my local shop wasn't ordering from Great Planes at that time.

I find that the more I spend, the more I shop around to get the best price. That's one reason I keep coming back to RC-Monster.com.

:)

P.S.-> The FMA BalancePro packs are no longer on pre-order at Horizon. My order should be at my local shop today and I'll be picking them up tomorrow. Chances are the Scorpion packs are ready to ship, too.

Have any of you guys had a chance to try out the Scorpion lipo packs?

Dear supermaxx4190,

I have a similar situation as yours with the Lipo. I am running 6s Kokams with my E savage & the FMA LVC device can only take 4s. In order to obtain 6s, I am using 2 units of 3s packs with a Y jumper. What I have done is to wire the LVC to 'see' only 1 unit of the 3s pack thus falling within the limit of the LVC device.

The LVC works (my guess here) by monitoring the battery voltage of the Lipo & cut off the signal to the esc when a preset value is reached. In order to 'see' the voltage, a red wire (+) is attached to the + terminal of the battery (this wire part of the LVC). Of course, the assumption here is that the negative of the battery is common with the ground receiver. This is true if bec is used. If not, then there is a problem. This is a problem also for the Y cable & my setup to 'cheat' the LVC into sensing only the 3s pack. I had to add another wire (-) to the negative (ground) pin of the LVC device. This (-) wire is then connected to the ground of the Y harness. This is important. Because the 6s is made up 2 units of 3s packs wired in series, there is a possiblity that one can attach the (-) wire to the node where the (-) of the first battery pack connect to the (+) of the second pack. This is wrong & can cause severe damage to the whole electronic system (I don't know what will happen but I do not want to find out)!

Anyway, once the negative wire is added & the positive wire provided by the LVC is connected, the unit functions perfectly. I.e. the LVC allows signal to pass through from the receiver to the esc.

Coming back to the earlier comment on the bec. If one is not using a bec (if one is using a UBEC or external battery pack), one will also need to wire the extra (-) wire so that a common ground can be established between the LVC unit & the battery (i.e. the LVC can sense the batttery voltage).

Hope I am making sense. I will try to post some pictures somewhere soon.

Regards,
Joe Ling

Hi,

Here is a crude picture to illustrate what I was trying to say.

Regards,
Joe Ling

Let me try again on the picture