[Lone_Bullet.be]

It's a real shame that I need to correct some things in my first post ( long-time lurker )... For this, I apologise. Also, If I write down mistakes, please notify me. I try not to wrongly inform people.

mAh stand for "milli Ampère hour". It's an electrical term. Read it as the capacity of your battery. The battery's endurance / stamina, if you will. So, in a way it kind of is BB / battery life-time, but not with a 1/1 ratio.

To prove this: take a 1600mAh 7.4v Lipo, 11.1v LiPo, 7.2v NiMH, 8.4 NiMH and 9.6 NiMH. All of them are capable of delivering a current of 1600mA ( or 1.6 Amps ) in approximately one hour. But since the Voltage differs, the motor will run at a different speed with each different rated battery ( relatively... I'll come back to this. ) Since the motor runs at different speeds, the piston and nozzle with move at different speeds and thus the amount of BB's fed into the gun and shot out, will differ.
Thus, if you run 3day skirms, take a 2600mAH rated battery or higher.
If you run CQB with a safe-zone close by and short games, a 1000mAH battery will suffice.
Good to know: this is the rating that will lower quickly of you don't do maintenance to your batteries ( de-charge NiMH completely before recharging and balancing LiPo's ).

LiPo's are also rated with a C value. I don't know the name of it, but it stands for the maximum discharge current. These can be very high, 20-30Amps and higher, but they cannot deliver that for a long time, of course.
Because of this high discharge value, LiPo's are very powerful. See it as max. burst torque or acceleration. It makes the 7.4v LiPo behave like a 9.6v NiMH.
Why? Because it can supply the motor with all the current it needs, thus the motor will accelerate very fast to it's normal speed. It vastly reduces the AEG's trigger response.
NiMH have a very low C value, mostly not even mentioned on the battery itself.

Now, LiPo is in almost every way superior to NiMH and even more to NiCad.
This is why:
- It delivers more power ( endurance and acceleration ) in a smaller, although more venerable package.
- There are also more different kinds of packages: Stick, Block, 2 pannel, 3 pannel, 2 stick, 3 stick. Nimh and NiCad always contain tube-like cells. LiPo mostly have flat cells.
- They live much longer if you care for them.
- They are MUCH cheaper.

They do have certain points that may be troublesome for some people:
- They ARE vulnerable: Short-circuit or completely depleting your cells ( below 3v/cell ) will damage your battery. In some cases to the point of fire. That's the downside of being powerful. Protect your AEG with a fuse and LiPo under voltage protection ( both cheap ) if you're not confident. And place your battery INSIDE your AEG, protected by the body. Use good wire with good insulation and check them for damage before you use a LiPo.
- They DO require special chargers. Chargers with balancers that is. They make sure every cell is equally charged and do not overcharge. good ones are not cheap, but also not overly expensive, and you can charge almost every battery with them. Read the manual though.
- If you'd like to use a powerful ( anything above 7.4v 1200mAH 15C ) LiPo in long-therms, you'd want a mos-FETT installed to prevent the trigger contacts ( AEG trigger-switch ) from being burned or welded together. Certainly if you shoot in long bursts. A Mos-FETT is also cheap.

Want to convert your AEG from NiMH to LiPo?
- US$ 15-25 for the battery
- US$ 40-... for a decent charger
- US$ 10-... for the mosfet.
- US$ 10-... for the LiPo under voltage protection and fuse