Radio shack has all of the plugs (male and female) that you'll need. Yes, you sure can just put a pair of female banana jacks on the top of your battery compartment--and use your starter as well as charge back through them. Just make sure you use at a minimum 14 gauge wire to connect the jacks to the battery, and better yet use 12 gauge! I have a hobbico power panel in my box (with starter jacks) and I too ran another set of jacks straight off of the battery. That way I can be using my field charger on one set, and my starter on the other set. I also use the electric fuel pump feature of the power panel, but never use the glow clip at the field. A good use for the glow clip off of the power panel is when you are first breaking in an engine on the bench, and you have it real rich and need to keep a little heat on the plug to keep it running--this is the ONLY thing I use my glow clip for. For all starting purposes, I use the rechargeable for the same reasons as listed above! I think my next field box type purchase may very well be a self-contained battery for my starter so that I won't have any wires anywhere when starting my engines! Also, it will make it much easier to start a dead engine on the runway! If a starter is the only thing you'll be using your 12 V for, then you might think about going that direction!