My new M4

Got my ICS M4 today... Love it!

I love this gun, feels great and sturdy, just gonna have to practice putting the battery in lol.

Thanks Brad!

Saw someone besides Brad inside Practical Tactical, was that you knight?

Nope, Knight is in Alberta currently

Something has happened to my barrel, and sight, I can grab the handguard and rotate it left and right, which moves the sights, is this supposed to happen? Or do i have to tighten something

there are small hex screws behind the front sight that you can access when the foregrip is off. There are 2 or three of them and they have to be periodically tightened. I would imagine they come loose during shipping. Shaos' comes loose every once in awhile. Now lets see a picture of the happy new owner and gun.

Thanks for the info, I'm getting pissed at my battery tho lol, I need to buy a nunchuck style from Brad, other than that my gun is fine. Still need to buy all my gear tho

Hahahaha it takes practice to get a small stick pack in there. LOL a nunchuck would be easier.

Gonna try and get there on tuesday or thursday if my dad isnt being a dick like he usually is, gonna buy one asap, plus the stock battery is only 600Mah, which I don't like.


If I charge the battery, shoot a bit, will it damage the battery If i plug it back in to top it off?

Yes. Fully discharge it and then fully charge it. The slower the charge the better. Rapid, fast charging damages the battery.

So, I need to either compeletly drain the battery from shooting it, or get a discharger?

Yup. Old computer fans are great dischargers. Beats having to find an actual branded discharger.

Also, shooting it until it drains puts a lot of wear and tear on your gun. I would not advise doing that, or be prepared to spend some cash getting your internals replaced from an excess of unneeded use.

beach_boy wrote:

Yup. Old computer fans are great dischargers. Beats having to find an actual branded discharger.

Also, shooting it until it drains puts a lot of wear and tear on your gun. I would not advise doing that, or be prepared to spend some cash getting your internals replaced from an excess of unneeded use.

That's only if the battery is a NiCad.

If you fully discharge a NiMh (nickel metal hydride) and store it dead, you WILL wreck it.

There was a full explanation of battery types somewhere here in the forums.

When it is all said and done, it is best practice to fully discharge and then fully charge your battery despite what kind it is. Some are more sensitive to the style of charging, but if you take good care of your gear it'll treat you better in the long run.

Sorry Beach Boy I'm just referring to storage. NiCad store fully discharged. NiMh store fully charged and top up when you want to use it. There was a big section in here about different battery type and the correct ways to charge and store them but it looks like it was deleted. I used to race R/C cars and had some really expensive batteries and chargers. Back in the day all there was, was NiCad batteries, which you had to fully discharge or suffer the "memory" effect. The new battery types out now are mostly NiMh (Nickel Metal Hydride) and LiPo (Lithium Polymer) and a really new one LifePro(Most have never heard of this one).

NiCad - Cheap and somewhat abundant, but suffers the memory effect if not completely discharged before storage. But really high discharge rates, way higher than necessary for an airsoft gun.

NiMh - Little more expensive and coming down all the time. Most common now. No memory effect but needs to be stored with a charge on it or it will wreck the battery. No memory effect at all. Good discharge rates, good for airsoft.

Li-Ion - Haven't seen available for airsoft.

LiPo - Fairly Expensive, chargers are really expensive. High voltage batteries, no memory effect. Battery weight 1/5 compared to NiCad or NiMh. Showing up in all R/C (radio controlled aircraft) and some cars now too. Little finicky to charge and may even explode if incorrectly charged. Most cell phones now a days have LiPo batteries in them.

LifePro - just google it.

Links to battery info.

http://servocity.com/html/nicad_vs__nimh_batteries.html

http://www.greenbatteries.com/nibafa.html

http://www.srbatteries.com/nimh.htm

http://www.rc-airplanes.com/rc-airplane-batteries.htm

http://www.andybrain.com/archive/nimh-lion-nicad-rechargeable-battery.htm

http://www.radicalrc.com/nimhfaq.html

NiMh do require a power cycle once in a while, something like once every 30 charges is ideal. Some sites recommend a once a month cycle for ANY Nickel based batteries. They do develop a memory, although much slower then NiCad due to the same effect.

I read that NiCad can be topped off a few times in between full charges/discharges without any adverse affects. Is there any truth to this?

Should also add that Lipo batteries should never be discharged fully, or even almost fully. There's a minimum voltage per cell that it has to have.

Quote from wiki. "The voltage of a Li-poly cell varies from about 2.7 V (discharged) to about 4.23 V (fully charged), and Li-poly cells have to be protected from overcharge by limiting the applied voltage to no more than 4.235 V per cell used in a series combination. Overcharging a Li-poly battery will likely result in explosion and/or fire. During discharge on load, the load has to be removed as soon as the voltage drops below approximately 3.0 V per cell (used in a series combination), or else the battery will subsequently no longer accept a full charge and may experience problems holding voltage under load."

Also this new battery you speak of, could it be LiFePO4 ?

Like I said b4 ....

NiCad - Store fully discharged. A cycler would be nice but an added expense, that's why NiCads are so cheap. They were one of the first battery technology's when I used to race R/C Cars.

NiMh - are the next generation, I haven't had a NiMh suffer any memory effect and the only way to frack them up is to FULLY discharge them and leave them. So the point is if you have NiMh batteries keep a charge on them at all times and u can top them up before you go to a game if you have a peak charger.

LiPo Batteries are starting to hit the R/C world and the airsoft world as well. boasting higher voltages which make you rate of fire absolutely insane, but thinking about it that it may cause un-necessary strain and or gearbox failure. LiPo batteries are 1/5 the weight of other battery types and you will see them a lot in cell phones and R/C helicopters. Actually that's how the LiPo came to the Radio control world was crafty builders robbing thier cell phone batteries to use in the little helo's. The companies soon jumped on the bandwagon.

The last one Life-Pro maybe it was LiFePO4 hasn't seen huge demand due to $$$ but may be exploited in the future. there are many battery types out there and the 2 most common and cheap are NiCad and NiMh.

To more directly answer your question about NiCad's, I used to greatly abuse them in my racing days, you are supposed to allow them to cool b4 recharging. I used to stick them on the charger hot out of my R/C rigs when they were so quickly discharged they almost burn your hands. It's hard to discharge a battery fully without getting bored and forgetting about them, we used to make a row of 12, vehice lights wired in parallel to dump Nicads. But that can cause trouble too, often you would forget that you had the bulbs on a pack and remember a few hours later, that usually was enough to OVER-discharge a NiCad battery pack and wreck it too.

So when all is said and dome, look for some nice NiMh batteries, charge it, go play, top it up when you get home and then put it in the closet with the rest of your gear and forget about it.

I like simple.

Yes simple is always good.