G'day

One small problem. You live in Australia. We use 240 Volt mains. If you buy the system from Tower it will almost certainly come with a 110 Volt charger. You will most probably have to buy another charger here. They cost about $25 so it is not a great deal. I recently bought a Hitec radio and it came with a charger which has a reversible plug on its end and a second plug to fit JR radios.

Batteries and servos use the same connector. On the receiver there will be a row of three pin connectors - one row for each channel and one for the battery. You can plug the battery into any of the three pin connectors though (so long as you get it the right way round). The power connectors on each three pin connector are all connected together in a BUSS.

Transmitters do not all use the same charging connector. JR and Futaba use different polarities on their transmitter connectors and although the connectors look similar they are slightly different as well. Most transmitters are protected with a diode so that if you do plug in the wrong type, it simply does not work (led does not light). Some people used to remove the diode so thay could cycle the battery (discharge and then recharge) in the transmitter but this is not smart. Better to remove the battery if you want to do this but that is another story.

The chargers that come with most radios charge the receiver battery and the receiver battery at the same time. Usually there are two LEDs which are on when the charger is connected and working. They do not go out when the battery is charged. These are dumb chargers. They typically charge at 50 to 150 mA and take 14 hours to charge a fully flat battery. They will usually charge both 4.8 (4 cell) and 6.0 (5 cell) packs as they are constant current chargers but they are usually designed so that if you leave then connected for ever, they won't do serious damage to your batteries.

There are lots of smarter chargers out there. The Swallow EQ AC/DC is a good general purpose charger which is easy to use. I have been using the DC (12 volt) version for ages and recently bought the more versatile AC/DC version with the inbuilt LiPo balance charger.

I do not fast charge my receiver and transmitter packs. Many people do but I find the slower longer charge is more reiable.

Another useful tool is a battery tester. I have an ancient Thunder Tiger analogue expanded scale voltmeter which works well on 4 cell packs and 8 cell transmitter packs but there are many more modern equivalents out there. These devices load the battery and then measure its voltage under load.

Have fun finding out all the stuff you need to know.

Cheers

Mike in Dubbo