Discussions

I'm looking to get a battery (or batteries) for a hexacopter. As the name implies it has 6 of these motors. So if I've calculated things out properly, and I'm just learning about this stuff now, the maximum current draw should be 120A plus whatever the APM needs (which I think is minimal?).

Here's what I was thinking: 4000mAh at 30C would give me the requisite 120A.  However, at full thrust that would only give me 4Ah/120A*60min = 2 minutes of flight time.  Now, with 6 of these motors I should have plenty of thrust even at 50% load which should give me 6.1A/motor*6motors = 36.6A, so 4Ah/36.6A*60min ~ 6.5 minutes of flight time.

Am I doing my calculations correctly? Any suggestions for how to size my battery to power things? Does it make sense to get 8000 or 8400mAh at 30C to extend the flight time?

Thanks!