The first time you find your battery dead because you forgot to unplug it, you'll buy a switch along with the new battery. Should your battery be a lithium and you were lucky enough to have not started a fire with it..................

And any switch that does not turn off the system is a bad switch and should be replaced. But keep in mind, even a disconnected battery will slowly drain on the shelf. If your switch is one of the fancy ones with LED indicators and such, it may have an active circuit in it that can drain the battery. All be it slowly. Knowing what you need but also knowing what you have is important in this hobby.

Those who fly without a switch have several reasons for it. Main one is the weight and this holds true for only the lightest of models. Park flyers and smaller. Another reason would be having a switch just complicates the whole system too much for the owner to comprehend. Anything after that is simple laziness.

The simplest most basic radio set up is: Battery connects to switch. Other side of switch connects to the receiver. Servos plug into the other connections on the receiver.

Make sure on the battery/switch connection the red wires line up and the black do too. That is, red goes to red and black to black. On the receiver, mind your polarity. Each pin in each group of 3 should be identified as to pos or neg voltage with the center pin always being the servo signal lead. It's usually a small label on the receiver case that only the really young can see any more. Also make sure you know what voltage your receiver can handle. I'm not aware of any that can not handle at least 6 volts any more and some can go to 9 now. Maybe even more. Older systems I wouldn't go over 6 until I knew for sure what it can use. But the servos too can have different voltage capabilities. I say capabilities because everything pretty much will run on 6 volts. Unless it's really, really old stuff. And BTW, that 6 volts comes from either a NiCd or NMHi batteries. NOT Lithium! A 2S lithium will blow a system designed for 6 volts if it's not protected by a voltage regulator.

BTW, you can find your receiver manual on line here: Rx Manual You'll see the receiver can handle 8.5 volts. Obviously 2S lithium were considered in the design.