I noticed that with a fully charged battery and in chill mode I get about 10kW of top power, which in my case is enough for a no wind takeoff. However I also noticed that as the voltage drops during the flight so does the max power. After using about 50% of the 4kWh battery capacity, I was only able to get 6kW at full throttle. This was enough to gain altitude however I can’t see me getting off the ground in a no wind day.
I am guessing that the ESC is limiting current and not power in chill mode, is there any way to set a power limit instead? If not, can the top power/current in chill mode be adjusted? Or was this some sort of an over-temperature limit I was hitting?
Yes chill mode limits throttle percentage to 70% and also reduces throttle ramp up.
If you are using a bi-blade, with chill mode and lower battery voltage the power is bellow 10kw but 6 seems pretty low.
I want to add a feature that make the modes based off power and not throttle percentage. That way say chill mode could be set to 10kw and it will stay the same even with different props and voltage.
Yes, thrust felt pretty low, was climbing but not enough for a take off. The constant power mode will definitively be better. Will give normal mode a try.
I would use that! My experience was similar, I wanted to try the chill mode for my second flight starting at 35% of battery. I was able to take off but then it felt like I wasn’t climbing at all. I was on full throttle and on the breaks the entire flight just to keep the altitude, made a gentle circle and landed. The throttle window was showing 6-6.5 kWt at most the entire short flight.
I don’t know if this is the place to comment about this, I have thoughts on both the prop and battery power.
My background is in electrical and have become rather good at solar power systems and some of the power curves.
Power use is what is limiting the current stream of electric paramotors. I believe in general, for most paramotors, you can get about an hours worth of power from the battery.
I’d really like to hear from someone who has flown both the two blade prop and the 3 blade prop.
air resistance and aerodynamics gets involved in all this as well as the battery conditons, type of wing, how hard you have to run the motor, all adding up to the power use.
In the case of the tri blade prop, you would enjoy more power at a cost of more energy being used.
I read that using the single (double) prop would have less thrust but you may need less power for that push. Add chill mode to that formula and what do you have?
The question comes up, would a single prop give you any advantage of longer battery life or is this just something that sounds good in numbers, but in reality, does not actually have any power savings.
A big plus would be if you could fly along thermals were you could actually glide along enjoying the benefit of the up winds taking you higher.
The gliders have done this forever and I believe there are actual clubs that do this.
With the battery limited flight time, thermals could be a big advantage.