Longer Blade Inductrix Flight Times

Increase your flying fun with the Blade Inductrix Battery Connector Mod

If you bought yourself a Tiny Whoop or one of the many great clones like the awesome Blade Inductrix, you may notice your flight time degrading a few seconds each flight. After several flights you may find you are spending much less time flying then when your Inductrix quadcopter was new.

It's not uncommon for brand new out of the box Blade Inductrix quadcopter to fly for 3 to 4 minutes or longer. Unfortunately, it is also quite common for this time to be slowly reduced each flight.

We spent a lot of time researching the best way to increase flight time and the best way how to overcome this. Many Internet pilots claim their reduced flight times are because of a bad power connector that was used on these models. Others claim it's because of bad boards which trigger the Flight Controller (FC) too soon to shut down power to the board based on voltage drop of the battery.

There have been mods on earlier boards that were defective that would bypass the low voltage cutoff circuit by shorting two resistors together with solder, or adding another resistor in parallel. Trying to fool the FC into staying on a little longer while longer to keep you in the air.

Blade Inductrix Battery Connector Mod

Blade chose to use an Ultra Micro JST connector for their Inductrix, Inductrix FPV, and Inductrix FPV Pro.  Now it is not a standard Ultra Micro JST connector because Blade chose to slip it into a little plastic sleeve that provided a better grip when plugging in and removing the connector from the battery on their drones.  This white plastic sleeve also shows proper battery orientation with a little painted red dot.

Now when they assembled this gripper sleeve, they just slid it over a standard Ultra Micro JST battery connector and glued it on. We noticed right off that the battery would bump up against this plastic sleeve before it made full contact with the Ultra Micro JST connector.

Instead of just clipping the cable and soldering on a new connector, or de-soldering the old wire from the Flight Controller Board like many online suggested,  here are a few tips that will help extend your flight time.

The tiny Ultra Micro JST connector takes the amps from all four motors, the flight controller board and the camera if you use a Blade FPV model. So a lot of electrical juice passes though this tiny connector. If it is not making good contact with the battery, you will have more resistance which can cause heat. It can also create a temporary voltage sag which is all the FC needs to trigger a shut down mode to preserve your battery from early failure.

LiPoly batteries last a lot longer when you only discharge them to 3.7 volts. Any lower and you shorten their life span. As they age, batteries will also start to degrade and they will no longer charge to full capacity like when they were new.

A typical RC battery is good for 50-60 charges. If you balance charge, they are good for over 100 charge cycles before you no longer would see the voltage go to 4.2 volts on a full charge.

How to Perform The Ultra Micro JST Connector Mod

The tiny connector on the Blade Inductrix line of tiny drones use a Micros JST connector. Blade makes them even heavier by adding another part which I call a gripper sleeve. This little sleeve makes it easier to grasp the connector and remove it from your battery but it ads additional weight.
Every gram you can shave off the longer your flight time will be.

These connectors are the same one used to connect the motors to the FC board. The problem lies these tiny connectors are only good for about 30 cycles before they wear out. That's 15 connects, and 15 disconnects and then they loosen up and are done. To get some of your battery flight time back, order up some spare sets of Micro JST 1.25 connector cable.


We tried these connectors from eBay, or these from Micro Motor Warehouse and there was a difference.

The Micro Motor Warehouse connectors had a silicone type wire and it was a little heavier duty than the connectors we found on Amazon and from eBay but were more expensive. The wire on Amazon Micro JST connector we bought was not silicone and not as large a gauge. It may be adequate, but I am not totally convinced.

When I replaced the Blade Inductrix factory connector, it made a huge difference in my flight time. And after seeing these two connectors side by side, from now on I will only be buying and using connectors from Micro Motor Warehouse.

Power Connector Replacement Tips

You will need to replace your existing connector by either directly soldering it to the board, or trimming back your old connector and splicing a new connector cable in.  If you want to use the splice method which is easier due to the glue used on some of the boards, use the staggered method as shown below and you only need to use a small piece of shrink wrap over both wires with no possible way they can short out. The X represents the solder joint, the hashed line is your wire and the solid wire is the shrink tube covering both solder joints.

_______________

------X--------------

------------X--------

_______________

Here's another thing you can do to increase flight times.