Hey guys,

I haven’t been flying for a while I think it’s been about 8 months since I have had a plane in the air. ( maybe a little longer)
My question is my batteries have had no maintenance since then. Can I just charge them up with the wall charger?
I have an ESV to check them out, and a Hobbico quick charger for the field. All of my batteries are NiCad 4.8v &9.6v, and they are probably no more than 18 months since they were new. I just need to know if I will need to get all new batteries before I start flying again, or will they still be fine with a fresh charge.
Thanks for the help.

they should be fine with a 16 hour charge with the wall charger.

CYCLE them before you use them. Then put about a 20 hr charge in them.

You should treat a battery that has been stored (or not used for a long time) just as you would a new battery. Do a forming charge, that is a slow charge at approximately 0.1C for 15 to 16 hours. It may take two or three cycles of this forming charge followed by a discharge to about 1 volt/cell at 0.25C to bring the battery back to full capacity. Check out www.rcbatteryclinic.com for some good info on how to care for your batteries.

How do I cycle the battery? Can I just leave the power on until it drains down and then recharge with the wall charger, and do this 2 or 3 times?

If don't have a batter recycler, but you have an expanded scale volt meter, you can connect it to the battery & discharge it through the meter load. You will have to pay attention to it & not let the voltage fall below 4.2V. Then recharge it.

Thanks britbrat, that what Ill do.

Just to make sure that you understand what I mean -- the expanded scale volt meter is the type used specifically for monitoring RC flight-pack & Tx batteries -- they are typically marketed by Hobbico, Tower etc. These things put a 250mA load on the battery. An ordinary volt meter does not have a load.

It doesn't make a great deal of difference how you discharge them, just monitor the voltage and do not let them discharge below 1 volt/cell--4.4 volts for the reciever battery: 8.8 volts for the transmitter battery. The reason for that is so that you never reverse charge the weakest cell in the string which could cause permanent damage to that cell. Actually, if you could monitor each cell and never discharge to the point where one reverses polarity, no harm would be done even if some of the cells were discharged to zero volts; however that is impracticle to do so, to be safe, just stop the charge at 1 volt/cell and you will never reverse charge the weak cell and yet most of the energy will have been dumped from all cells. Do check out www.rcbatteryclinc.com for good valid info on the care of your batteries.