ORIGINAL: B Trimble
gunfighterII,the instructions claim it has a 40A ESC. The battery is a 650 mah, 9.6v 8 cell Ni-Mh. After using the two hour wall charger the battery got warm,after the 1/2 3/4 throttle run down it was almost too hot to touch. Today,I charged it on my Super Brain,after about 15 min. I meandered out to take a peak and the charger showed 3/4 charge and almost 11v! Now I'm kinda new to electrics,but that didn't seem normal so I unplugged it,and it was hotter than hell,and you could hear it (battery) making like a gurgling noise. It didn't leak or anything,so about a half hour later I tried it in the plane. Still works,full throttle sounds the same,but the plane will not stay in the air.Even hand launching it,it just glides to the ground at full throttle. I'm hoping it's due to the battery,just under powered.
An 8 cell NiMh battery will read just over 11 volts fully charged (11.1 or so) That is the "peak " voltage 9.6 is the "nominal" voltage.
Forming a charge should be done very slowly at 1/10 the capacity of the battery for about 12 hours.
ie... Your 650 mah battery should be charged at around 65ma. The charger that came with your model has a rate over 300ma to charge in 2 hours. (I am not a fan of fast charging NiCad or NiMh batteries)