RE: Your thoughts after reading JR 12X manual
This is off the present discussion but pertains to the 12X. My oldest 12X is 2 1/2 yrs. old. Soon after I bought it I experienced what I thought was a radio software failure, as it wouldn't change out of the System to the Function menu. I sent it in, they said it was a battery failure (really?), installed a new battery and sent it back. It's worked flawlessly ever since. But now the battery is 2 1/2 yrs. old and I want to replace it. Several of my friends have 12Xes and two have also experienced a problem that turned out to be battery battery related. One was a blinking screen, the other went from 9.6 volts to battery alarm during a short flight. We are all leery of the JR OEM battery after these experiences. One fellow heard about Sin City Jets in Las Vegas offering Sanyo eneloop batteries. I Goggled on eneloop batteries and was amazed to see that they are NiMH batteries that hold 85% of their charge for one year. That's light years ahead of regular NiMH batteries and their relatively high self discharge rates. The eneloop cells are 2000 mAh. I heard they might make higher capacity ones down the road but I can fly six times and only put in 400 mAHs so 2000 mAh capacity was good enough for me. My friend sent his pack to Sin City and they installed the eneloops. I opted to have them send me the 8 cell pack, all I had to do was solder the two leads from the IC board to the end of the pack tabs. We've both had the eneloops for a month or so and everything seems to be just great. One word of caution, the heat sensor is no longer installed in either pack so I wouldn't use the JR supplied wall wart to charge with. I was never very comfortable with it anyway as it really heats up the battery pack before it shuts off. I use my Triton which enables me to read the amount of charge which I feel is valuable information. Airwayman