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Hey everyone, it took a ton of research but I've compiled an article that ran in Velocity RC Magazine about the Evolution of RC Batteries. You can read it at the link below:

http://www.vrcmag.com/free_articles/VRC_012_Battery-History_Free/

Enjoy,

Jeff

Awesome article Jeff! As a 40 year old and 30 year RC vet I can relate to every step in the sub c journey! Whats even crazier is that I also raced fast electric boats on a national level back in the day. With the boats, the handling, charging, and abuse of sub c packs were even more crazy. Try dumping a matched 12 cell 2400 mah pack in less than 70 seconds!! lol Initially I backed away from the boat end of the hobby when lipos came on. It was bad enough back then that we were sourcing hand made brushless set ups from over seas builders which were fickle and cost a fortune. Then when the lipos started drifting in at $2-300 a pack or more at a time when you could roast a sub c pack in a few runs, I shelved the boats. No way I was gonna chance investing that kinda coin on a technology they said was responsible for house fires lol I did stick with the sub c's to the end though and still have a few 4600 nimh packs. I'd have to dig out some of my 80s and 90s vintage packs to check, but didn't the actual cell size grow with the gp cells? I can remember trying to shoe-horn a 4300 pack into a grasshopper at one point and scratching my head when it didn't fit!?

Lol imagine if you had a 7000 mah pack to run in your rc10 back in the 80s! They would have thought you from another planet. 40 minutes of run time with a pinion the size of a quarter lol

Sorry if I veered off just reliving my own histories

Trey

Thank you for doing this!

that's great, thanks Jeff!

Great article thanks for sharing it.

thanks
that was a fun read
i used to keep a battery diary with a record of charge rates and peaks voltages etc..
think it was one of the more interesting parts of racing
boats were definitely a battery killer

I just came across this post and it was an eye-opener. My knowledge of RC batteries stopped in about 1989. Wow how things have changed. I just ordered my first LiPo Rc battery and a Turnigy charger.

Scott

cool article. the time line part of the article on page 72. there is no mention of 1400's or the 2400's or 3800's.

also, no mention of the 1200sc's that were out before the 1200SCR or the 1300sc. also no mention of the 3000 panasonic ultra metal or a few others. I skimmed the article. Apologies if I missed it.

some of these may have been in it.



The white ones were either Saft or Varta? hard to remember, they were around or before the 1200sc

Very cool article, thanks for sharing!

Wow, I didn't realize how many flavors of NiCd and NiMh cell types I missed after getting out of the hobby 20 years ago. The Sanyo 1700 SCRC was the cell of choice back then. I've never even heard of GP or Intellect brand cells before this.

Thanks for the article!

Great article! I started racing in '86 and got out in mid '90! I only used the yellow Sanyo 1200SE and then went to the red Sanyo 1200SCRs! I only raced the stock class 27t 6 cell so I didnt get caught up in most of the battery wars! It was fun back then at the hobby shop seening the numbers on new matched packs and trying to sneak a peak at what other guys at the track had!

Great read! Helped to fill me in on what took place during the 15+ years I stepped away from the hobby.

I topped out at the 1700 scrc, some guys at the track had the panasonic p170's, I wouldnt mind collecting a pack or two for display.

on another note, im finally back into running my cars again....used my first lipo pack ever last week

Fun article Jeff. Going way back...

When I started in 1978 most people were using 1000mah GE Ni-Cd's or Saft. The GE's had a green shrink wrap on the individual cells, or white shrink on 3-cell sticks. The Saft sticks were white also.

Around 1979 the Sanyo 1200 SC cells came out with the yellow/red shrink on individual cells. The Sanyo sticks were plain yellow shrink wrap. We used those for several years, they were much better for racing than the old GE's and pretty durable. When I won the Worlds in 1982 I used 1200 SC sticks. Back then we went by the batch codes stamped on the sticks to find good packs. We didn't have the technology to do good battery testing at that time. Before the 82 Worlds I went to Associated and used a digital scale to find the heaviest sticks with the "ME" batch code. I also used 1200 SC sticks at the 1984 Worlds in Denmark.

The 1200 SCR cells with the red shrink wrap came out about the same time as the RC10 buggy was released, so around 1985. They had a lot more voltage but for on-road they were difficult to make last for the full 8 minute races, so most of the SCR's were used for off-road. The SCR's were indestructibly tough cells.

For the 1986 Worlds in Las Vegas everyone was still running the 1200 SC cells in saddle pack configuration. The big difference was that some of the manufacturers were beginning to test capacity and match packs.

Around 1987 Sanyo released the 1700 SCE "Extra" cells with the yellow/black shrink wrap. They were a lot higher capacity and run time, but very sensitive. If they got too hot the performance went down. It took a while to figure out that they didn't work well if they were used more than once a day. For a while we only used the first charge for racing, then used them for practice after that. At the 1988 Worlds in Denmark everyone using the 1700 SCE cells. They really weren't a great cell for RC racing, just too fragile.

--Kent

The Sanyo 1300SC saddle pack I built for my RC12L New Built "Period" Shelf car

Kent, I wish I could have seen you drive.

Gregg