Hi PaPa

Have you charged the batteries yet? You need to charge both the transmitter and receiver batteries on a new radio before you put it to use. It's recommended that the first time you charge new nicads that you charge them around 20 hours or so. I think it might say in the manual that came with your radio. The extra long charge time is only needed the first time. A normal recharge time with the factory charger is 14-16 hours for a completely discharged battery.

As far as the battery memory goes, don't worry about it too much. I think probably more batteries lose capacity due to overcharging than to any memory developed.

It is a good idea to cycle the batteries occassionally. This involves discharging the batteries to the lower end of their capacity and then recharging them. You do not want to discharge them completely to zero volts. On a 4 cell receiver battery such as yours, discharge to about 4.2 - 4.4 volts. Thats easy to check with your battery tester. If you don't have one yet you will want to get one; they aren't real expensive and will save your plane.

The 4VF transmitter will not discharge throught the charge jack into a voltmeter; to discharge the battery into a voltmeter you must remove the back and disconnect it. A simpler way is just to operate the transmitter intil the level meter starts going down into the red. That will work fine provided you have the antenna extended and are farther than 3 miles or so from any rc activity.

The transmitter should operate for 2 hours or so of flying time. It's harder to say for the receiver, maybe 4 or 5 flights. It depends on how much you operate the controls as much as anything. Do be sure that there is no binding, particularly on the throttle and nose wheel linkages. If they bind so that there is a continuous load, battery
life will be shorten quite a bit.

And the 4VF will be fine. Lots of them in use around here with no problems.


Larry