The website has a scrolling ‘news feed’ of items (see below) listed in date order, most recent first. You might prefer to access information from the general list of topics shown under “Categories” which appear to the right or beneath the ‘news feed’ depending on what device you are using. There is also a “search bar” facility, plus you can subscribe by email. If you’d like a demonstration sail, please click the Trial Sail item on the main menu bar above.
Even beginners to our sport encounter this debate pretty quickly. LiPos versus LiFes…
I was a little alarmed and disturbed to find my lovely 1800mah LiPos had all suddenly become puffy at the same time. Just two years old…The plastic covering on each battery seemed to be puffed with air/gas not fluid.
Pity – but I’ve realised now I’ve always been anxious about them in the house. They had an easy life – 18C-20C controlled temperature storage, not all that many charges, and always kept in double explosion bags. They have only ever been charged on a LiPo specific intelligent charger at 1amp max, and it cuts off when they’re full.
Mostly I’ve been confident about having them in the house, until hilarious friends email me YouTubes of Teslas catching fire……
So how to best dispose of puffy or leaky Lipos??
I thought perhaps puffiness with just air in there, no fluid,… was possibly OK… but see below. However, everyone agrees that LiPos can’t go in the household waste, not at the supermarket battery collection points either (not for Lithiums). If Waitrose caught fire, I’d never hear the end of it. They need to go to the official battery disposal place at the town dump.
You can’t just take them to the dump though. Best advice I could find was;-
1/ Deplete them totally.
I found they would go to zero current if attached to a receiver for 12-15 hours each. Alarmingly, instead of reducing the gas inside there, they actually expanded further. Blimey. I thought they were going to go “pop”… Like little balloons.
2/ Immerse them in salt water OUTSIDE for 48 hours.(see photo)
I found the most distant corner of the garden.
This is meant to neutralise the connectors and chemicals. Well, HUGE surprise – the water around these apparently “probably still OK” batteries turned a pile milky blue – lots of sediment in the bottom of the jar. So there really was something leaky in there… I threw that down a street drain.
3/ Now they are safe to go to the dump…..
I’m going to replace them with 1300mah LiFe’s, same weight to within a gram, same XT connectors. More on that later when they go through trials. I have maybe another 6 LiPos in the explosion bag from different manufacturers. I shall be really watching and inspecting them closely.
Given the popularity of our radio sailing Beginners Guides to Radiomaster, we have additionally produced a PDF download version of our Radiomaster programming website.
The website will always have the latest thinking on there, so check the website pages if you can. You can access it by clicking on RADIOS on the MENU of this website and you’ll be able to select Radiomaster/Futaba/Spektrum there.
Our 2025 pdf downloadable transmitter manuals for Radio Sailing Beginners have so far been popular. As I write, the Beginners Guide to programming the Radiomaster has been downloaded 1,075 times in a bit under a year. Doesn’t sound like many? Well according to AI there are only around 19,000 radio sailors in the World. Makes you think.
To upgrade the Datchet Radio Sailing manuals to include some really sexy radio sailing transmitter ideas, we built a website for each brand – we have Radiomaster, Futaba and Spektrum Manuals online now.
If you haven’t seen them, look for the button saying “RADIOS” on the menu (bar or button) of this Club website.
Naturally we thought the websites would sort of take over the popularity. Then something else unexpected happened – the number pdf downloads of the Beginner Manuals actually accelerated and increased.
Consequently now we’re wondering if the websites need to have pdf downloadable versions of their content. Perhaps readers prefer a repined manual to work from.
It wouldn’t take long to do. Let us know what you think!!
Datchet Radio Sailing - Making It All Much Easier !! 