Duralite regulator mounted on the Vigor's radio tray.

Duralite 3+1 charger

Duralite Volt Checker and Glow Driver

The big Fromeco regulator mounted on the Vigor, make sure you've got a nice big area to mount it!

Fromeco 4800mah Li-Ion battery

Fromeco '8 Ball' volt checker, a great little gadget!

Fromeco battery charger, bring your ear muffs!

Scott Gray's Reactor, the neatest implementation tested here.

Over the past couple of years, one of the latest popular accessories to put on your helicopter has been a regulated battery system.

The main benefits of these systems include supplying a constant voltage to your electronics (servos, gyro, receiver, etc) and in many cases, they’re connected to very high capacity (often Lithium Polymer or Lithium Ion) batteries that have a long endurance between charges.

WHY IT’S GOOD TO HAVE REGULATED VOLTAGE TO YOUR SERVOS
Under high load, servos can draw a lot of current, as the voltage drops the power of the servos decreases which can give your helicopter a ‘mushy’ feel. It loses some snappiness and response.

In an unregulated system, the voltage will change as you fly the helicopter. For instance, straight off the charge, your system may read something like 5.3 volts. However, after five minutes or so, it will be down to 5.1. Subsequent flights will see it get down to around 4.8 or so. A regulated system however, maintains the set voltage until the battery just can’t supply it. However you would ofcourse stop flying well before the battery gives up!

With a regulated system, your helicopter will give the same control response on subsequent flights as it did on the first flight after it was charged.

This also means that the servos will perform their best because the voltage won’t drop under high load. The servos will be snappier and stronger and the helicopter will feel more responsive flight after flight.

WHAT’S AVAILABLE?
That the moment, there are three popular choices in the regulator market.

The tried and trusted Duralite which has been used by many of the high profile pilots for years now.

Another more recent player is Fromeco who have been making large strides into the market with their adjustable Arizona system.

The third is designed and marketed by leading F3C and 3D pilot, Scott Gray under the Reactor brand name.

Duralite System
Probably the most famous of battery regulator systems, the Duralite regulator system has been around for a long time now and has amassed a loyal following amongst many of the top level pilots in our hobby.

I was supplied with a 5.3 volt switched regulator, a 4000 mah Lithium-Ion battery, battery charger, and a volt checker/glow igniter unit.

DURALITE 5.3 VOLT REGULATOR
The Duralite regulator is quite small when compared with other regulators on the market which makes installation a lot easier. The output is fixed at 5.3 volts. Duralite also make regulators at 5.1, 5.6 and 6 volts.

The switch used on this regulator is the familiar Futaba Heavy Duty one. It is set up so that if this switch fails, the system remains in the ‘on’ state.

The battery connects to the regulator via the familiar ‘servo’ plugs that we are used to with conventional Nicad/Nimh systems. The regulator is then plugged into the receiver and provides it with a constant 5.3 volt supply.

DURALITE 4000MAH BATTERY
The battery supplied was a 4000mah 2s2p Lithium-Ion with dual leads (one for charging another for output). The pack contains a Stay Balance Charge safe circuitry through which you charge. This circuit not only balances the cells 24/7 but also protects against any over charge malfunction that could occur during the charging

process. This is why Duralite won’t warrantee their packs if a non-Duralite charger were to be used given that an incorrect setting by the user could result in damage to the circuit. Duralite also offer a 4200 mah lithium polymer pack that is also redundant 2s2p and can deliver 84 amps continuous for anyone who feels 8 amps continuous is not sufficient. These packs also come with the safety balancing circuitry. The pack weighs in at 204 grams

DURALITE 3+1 CHARGER
Naturally, Duralite recommends you should only charge your Duralite cells with the Duralite charger. With their four way charger, you can charge four sets of Duralite cells at once. That means you can charge up to three helicopters and your transmitter at once. A great idea isn’t it? However you best leave yourself a good amount of time for charging cause it charges at 400mah/hour.

There are three 7.4 volt and one 11.1 volt outputs.

It’s sooo easy to use. You connect the charger to the power supply, and connect the charging leads to the battery. The green light comes on automatically, and goes off when charged. That’s it. Plus, it’s silent!

DURALITE GLOW DRIVER & DIGITAL LOAD TESTER
Now this thing here is more than a bit useful. With these regulated systems it’s very important to test your voltage under load. The recommended stop-fly voltage on the Duralite systems is 6.9 volts under a 1 amp load.

In order to check your voltage, you need a good voltage tester and naturally, Duralite makes one of those too. The Duralite tester has two load buttons, half an amp, and one amp. Pushing either of these applies the appropriate load to the connected battery and reports the resulting voltage back. When pushed simultaneously, the tester applies a 1.5 amp load.

This particular example is Duralite’s top of the range tester that also functions as a glow driver. This is good because you don’t tend to forget to pack it (cause you know to always pack your glow driver) and because it’s always nearby, it prompts you to test your battery regularly.

The glow adapter is sold separately but comes with banana plugs that are inserted into the jacks. Connect the adapter to your glowplug and then press the button which ignites the glow plug. A row of green led lights signify the current draw.

The battery inside the tester is charged by the Duralite 3+1 charger via the supplied cable which plugs into one of the 7.4 volt sockets.

In the two months I’ve been using the system every day of every weekend, I’ve charged it twice. It’s a very handy piece of equipment that’s for sure! Whether you want the glow driver version is up to you, there are cheaper ‘tester-only’ versions available also.

Fromeco System
The Fromeco line of products has been making big inroads into the regulator market in the last year or so and for good reason. The products perform well and are well priced.

FROMECO ‘ ARIZONA’ REGULATOR
The Arizona regulator is an impressive looking bit of gear, and it’s big. The big blue heat sink immediately takes your eye. The regulator has mounting tabs on each side and has two ‘jumper pins’ on the side which are used to set the desired voltage. More on this later. At one end of the regulator are two sets of pins for servo leads. This is where the gyro gain and rudder leads plug in. These outputs are fixed at 5.0 volts.

The regulator that I was supplied with used Deans connectors for connecting to the battery which I really liked.

This system was supplied with a pin switch where to activate, you pull a pin out of the switch, in much the same way as you would a grenade, if grenades are the kind of things you would play with…

The switch becomes a fail-on switch, which is a nice safety feature. It's also good in that it becomes a logical switch and does not have to carry the high current that we're expecting these regulators to provide. Normally our switch is used to connect both the positive and negative wires from the receiver to the battery. In this application, the switch, when turned on, connects two wires together, which happen to be the wires we would usually use for positive and negative, but in this application they are just switch wires. We can make a standard Futaba switch work by effectively using a jumper on one side of the switch, and plugging our two switch wires into the other side.

FROMECO PEERLESS 4800MAH BATTERY
A great big 4800mah battery was included in my Fromeco setup. The battery came with Deans connectors and also Overcharge Protect Circuitry.

The Overcharge Protection circuitry has a ‘jumper’ (much like you find on the end of hard drives) to enable/disable the protection.

Like the Duralite battery, the big Fromeco is a 2s 2p Lithium Ion setup and has a separate charge/check lead to the main power output lead. The pack weighs in at 187 grams.

FROMECO 8 BALL VOLTAGE CHECKER
As discussed earlier you need to regularly check your systems to ensure they’re not under the no fly voltage limit (Fromeco recommend that you stop flying at 7.0 volts on a 1 amp load).

In order to measure the voltage in your system, Fromeco offer a great little gadget called the 8 Ball. Yeah I’ve got no idea where they derive their product names either, but this thing is great.

It’s a little blue box with a digital display. You plug your battery into it and the display fires up and displays the unloaded voltage of your battery. Then it applies a one amp load on the battery and displays the voltage. It then ‘rests’ the battery and then submits it to a 1.5 amp load and shows that voltage. Once done, it unloads the battery and shows the resulting voltage.

If your battery is under 7.0 volts with a 1 amp load, the display will say “NO-FLY”. It doesn’t get much easier and clearer than that!

The 8 Ball is also a handy bit of gear to have around to help you adjust the voltage on your Fromeco regulator.

FROMECO THREE CHANNEL RELIACHARGER
Fromeco also, as you’d expect, have their own chargers. The one I have is a three channel edition (you can get up to five channels) which can charge up to three Fromeco batteries at once.

Each channel can charge at one of two charging rates, either 2.0 amps or 0.5 amp. Ofcourse, if you’re going to charge on all channels at 2.0 amps, you best have a grunty power supply!

This charger operates differently from all the chargers I’ve ever used. You connect it to your 12 volt power supply, connect your battery to one of the channels like you would expect.

The whole panel lights up in a shade of blue, and the fan starts emitting an unholy loud noise. You think the charger is charging. But it’s not.

No sir, you need to ‘toggle’ the charging channel’s output selector and then leave it on the output value you want to charge at. For example, if you want to charge at 2amps, toggle the selector switch a couple of times and then leave it switched to 2amps. A ‘faint’ blue led, which is only just recognizable over the saturated (and totally un-needed) blue backlighting, lights up, and we’re charging!

But only for three hours.

See the charger stops charging after three hours no matter what state of charge the battery is in. If your battery isn’t fully charged, you have to reset the charger so it continues charging.

Have I mentioned how LOUD the thing is??? The fan in it makes a horrendous racket. At first I had it charging on the stainless steel kitchen area, however the noise started drowning out The Simpsons on TV, so it had to go.

The charger looks very ‘home made’ also. Much like one of those ‘do-it-yourself’ assembly kits you can buy from a local electronics store.

As you can probably tell by now, I’m none too impressed with the charger. The good thing though is Fromeco openly state that you can use other chargers to charge their batteries as long as they are specifically designed for Lithium Ion batteries. Duralite on the other hand, state that you should only use the Duralite supplied system.

SGP Reactor System
World renowned F3C and 3D Scott Gray has started producing his own battery regulator system called the Reactor.

Here in Australia, the SGP Reactor has been doing quite well for itself thanks in large part to the efforts of the local distributor.

Unlike the other two systems reviewed here, the SGP Reactor doesn’t come as a kit, instead, it’s the regulator only.

You have to buy your own Futaba Heavy Duty switch (although the Reactor comes with the jumper required to use it), the battery and charger etc. As with the other regulators, the switch is the fail-on type.

The initial look of the Reactor is impressive. It’s sized about the same as a receiver, in fact it looks suspiciously like a JR receiver in shape. Where a crystal might usually be found there is a heat sink protruding, very neat.. The battery plugs into the Reactor which connects to the receiver via three leads (pitch, aileron and elevator) which power the receiver and it’s components at 5.2 volts. The Pitch, Aileron and Elevator servos then plug into the Reactor which provides a 5.6 volt supply to those components.

The switch lead from the reactor is connected to a standard JR or Futaba switch, then the other side of the switch, where a battery used to plug in, a supplied wire is plugged in. This wire is just a loop back that connects the ground and positive leads together, therefore making the switch also connect the ground and positive wires when in the on position. The sense of the switch is also reversed, so you need to turn the name plate around. On is now off, and off is now on, providing the sought after benefit that a disconnection or failure turns the power to the receiver on. The reactor only uses the switch as a logical connection, the high current does not pass through it.

BATTERIES
The documentation lists the battery types that can be used with the reactor, which includes Li-Poly, Li-Ion, Ni-MH and Ni-Cad. Li-Poly/Li-Ion should be 7.4V (2S2P or 2S), Ni-MH/Ni-Cad should be 7.2V (6 cells) and have at least a 10C discharge rating. I had a 2S 1800 polyquest pack around, and decided to use this as it was able to deliver the required current. Scott recommends 2000-2500mAh for 30-50 size and 2500-4000mAh for 60-90 size. The reactor has a wire with a deans plug to connect to the battery, and another one to use as a charging lead.

Being able to use your own battery takes a lot of the mystery out of this regulator, it's simple, it just takes 7.2-7.4V from a pack you supply and outputs 5.2 and 5.6 to the devices as required.

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