Having done this as well, I suggest you go ahead and price the NiCads at ServoCity (www.servocity.com) and get them on their way. You will find that the transmitter will charge but it won't hold its charge for more than a few days and then less and less as the batterys will begin to decay exponentially. Same thing happened to me and it got worse fairly quickly. The new batterys will hold for a week with no huge noticeable drop. Mine started at 3 days, then 2 day, then 1 day, then 12 hours, 6 hours and so forth.