Stratus 2 battery

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Rich
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Stratus 2 battery

Post by Rich »

I bought one of the very first of these a few years back. Suddenly I need a new battery. It will only run for about 1-1/2 - 2 hours on the battery. And if left off the charger for a couple of weeks, it seems to self-discharge.

The battery strength can be monitored through FF while you're connected (and it's not connected to a charger). For those of you who wire the unit right into the plane, expecting the battery to take over in case of power loss, it's worth occasionally testing the battery strength.

Since I bought it from Sporty's they are the ones who would replace the battery. But I'd rather get a replacement battery and do it myself. Anyone done this?
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Colin
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Re: Stratus 2 battery

Post by Colin »

I look forward to your report on replacing the battery. I have wondered about its health and life (and don't trust the reporting inside the FF app at all. State of Charge displays are notoriously useless).
Colin Summers, PP Multi-Engine IFR, ~3,000hrs
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Rich
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Re: Stratus 2 battery

Post by Rich »

Colin wrote:I look forward to your report on replacing the battery. I have wondered about its health and life (and don't trust the reporting inside the FF app at all. State of Charge displays are notoriously useless).
The state of charge report as the unit operated was fully informative. It started at 100% and went fairly linearly down as time progressed, with the state of the LEDs and the unit itself agreeing with this report. Of course the speed with which the percentage dropped was quite rapid and faster than expected. This is typical behavior, where 100% really means 100% of what the battery could possibly give you today, but doesn't mean 100% of original capacity.

What is missing is something analogous to what I have on my Mac Book, which is about 7 years old, and had the original battery still installed until recently. With the original battery the diaplay would show 100% charge when plugged in, but about a month ago it displayed "battery service required" in the dropdown. At the time I could only run on battery power for a bit over 2 hours. So I looked at the system diagnostics and it showed that, while the battery showed 100%, it's full charge mAh were only around 3000, where it should have been over 6000. I replaced said battery and at 100% it now shows about 6200 mAh. And the Mac will now run a bit over 5 hours without a charge.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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Rich
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Re: Stratus 2 battery

Post by Rich »

An update that might be of interest:

I had recently been using a general-purpose charger to recharge the Stratus, albeit with the provided high-amp cable. I wasn't getting the flashing red light indicating an inadequate charge, so I assumed it was not a problem. But perhaps it was, as I didn't seem to be getting the charge I expected. Since the unit still works, it's out of warranty and the plane is going in for annual next week, I figured I'd run some more tests. Data points so far:

1. Using the supplied charger, after a couple of charge/discharge cycles, the unit now gives me 4 hours of operation.
2. The "Power-Saving mode" doesn't seem to affect battery use much, if at all.
3. The battery percentage indicator is a reasonable predictor of how much charge you have left if interpreted against the time from full charge to some lower percentage. I'm finding it quite linear in this fashion. For example, if it goes from 100% to 75% in an hour, that means the the total time to dead-in-the-water is 4 hours, so I have 3 hours left. And it'll be about 50% at 2 hours continuous usage, 25% at 3, and so forth. It'll quit giving readings somewhere around 1-2% left but the unit will continue to function for awhile, at which point it shuts down.

I'll probably delay shipping it off for repair until a period of non-flying time comes up. While Appareo claims the unit will run for 8 hours without recharge, I never really tested this with any precision, so I don't know how much it would be improved by getting it worked on. I don't have any flights planned where this will be a problem and I have an external power-extender I can use in any case. I still haven't been able to trap a self-discharge behavior, so no info there.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
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