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Old 10-13-2007 | 06:47 AM
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da Rock
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From: Near Pfafftown NC
Default RE: Need Charger

If you're a beginner who thinks he is going to continue this hobby, you should very seriously consider purchasing an intelligent charger. It will do a number of things for you that are very worthwhile. It is actually worth buying instead of a 3rd or 4th model.

A charger like the ACCU-Cycle Elite can easily charge most of the battery types you're going to use over the years. And it will tell you how each of them is working for you. And you can use that information to keep up with the health of the batteries. And that can save you airplanes. I've found two batteries in the last year and a half that had cells going bad. If they had gone bad in the airplane they could have cost the airplane.

Some chargers also make recharging much, much easier. When I come home from flying, I plug my TX into one side of the Elite and plug the airplane that flew the most into the other. And head off to supper. When I check later, the two different batteries are charged and there is a readout that tells me how much capacity those used at the field. I compare that to how much I flew them and can tell in a glance if there is something going wrong in either the airplane or the battery. It's up to me to find that out, but I've gotten the info that somethings wrong. I can then use the charger to check the battery while I look the airplane over.

Your battery is a nickel-metal hydride and would take a 60mAh output wall wart charger if you chose to buy the cheapest charger you can find. But finding a 60mAh one may be easy or not. The charger that came with your TX/RX set will probably work. Ni-MH batteries charge the way Ni-Cd batteries do. You plug them in overnight and hope that's enough, if a wall wart is what you've got for a charger. If you have an ESV you can check their capacity next morning and charge some more if overnight wasn't enough.