G'Day y'self, Allan. How was your weekend? We had our Labor Day weekend so it was good weekend for flying. I spent most of the day yesterday (Monday) flying, and it was a great day.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

Dave Thacker (RadicalRC.Com) is a great authority on batteries and charge methods. He has always preached that fast charges are ok, but a good, slow .1C is a good way to go. The longer the better. The battery seems to respond better and you get a more balanced charge that way. So, .1C for a 1650 would be 165 ma for 10 hours.

He is also a great advocate for regular cycling of batteries. He talks about the frequency that this can or should be done, and how most of the batteries he has seen that no longer hold a charge, only require seveal long duration cycle sessions and they are frequently returned to full service.

So, slow and easy is the best way to go. Now, don't confuse this for the necessity of doing a quick field charge. You should have a good quality field charger (Sirius comes to mind here, as does the ICE and the Triton). but the simplest of the three is the Sirius. It will do both NiCd and NiMh batteries.

CGr