Re-reading my posts sounds to much like doom and gloom. So a little buffering here. Everything is critical with high power RC stuff, extemely critical to keep the batteries in good shape. The RC people are running up to 20C, sometimes more, until voltage sag causes shutoff. At that high a discharge rate, when the protection kicks in there is still a good amount of charge in the battery, it wasn't discharged fully.
C is short for capacity, 20C for a battery pack with 3000mah capacity would be a 60 amp discharge rate, you guys with daystates are likely not even hitting 2C for milliseconds at a time. If I had a daystate, I would just charge up to 3.8 per cell and use it. After getting used to how much your packs drain before they drop down to 3.5v, and I'm guessing that is more than 99% of you ever shoot in a day, charge it back up to 3.8v per cell or if you are shooting a lot over 2 days let it go lower than 3.5v and then charge it back up to 3.8v per cell. A couple or 3 times a month, using a proper battery charger, set your charger to do a full discharge/recharge cycle at the best current level for longevity in a lipo(I'd have to look it up), and then discharge it back down to 3.8v per cell. The full cycle is important for long term health.
You can do some things "wrong" and it doesn't really hurt, although lipo's are more sensitive to abuse than other lithium ion chemistries. I intentionally treat a set of 6 matched 16650 poorly. I charge them to full, not storage voltage, and keep them in the refrigerator. They are used two at a time in my Trijicon IR Hunter Mk3 scope, and when I want to use it I want fully charged batteries now. I just recently had them diverging a little in voltage after use so ran all of them through a couple discharge/charge cycles and repaired them by capacity/resistance. In almost 3 years and dozens of uses they are still 98% percent the capacity they were new and internal resistance changed just a tiny bit, not enough to matter except re-pairing them. If I didn't keep them in the fridge, I'm sure they would all be replaced by now.
A good lipo pack, left fully charged at the temperatures in your typical home, will only lose roughly 20% of its capacity in a years time. The battery will still be perfectly good, just have less capacity. That is a permanent unrecoverable loss. A very low charge on a lipo left alone for a year will lose about 1/4 of that, permanently. If you really get anal about it, I do with a few of my expensive batteries, get a good sealed non conductive container that won't let the batteries move, and put it in your refrigerator when not in use. All lithium chemistries are most stable between about 32 degrees F and 40 or so, get too cold in storage and you start increasing problems, ie: don't put it in your freezer. You could put a fully charged lipo in your refrigerator, forget about it for a year and maybe lose 2% capacity, instead of 20% at room temp.
