i haven't flown in years and all my battery packs are bad. The ones I have are below:

transmitter JR 9.6v 600mAh

receiver 4.8V 600mAh

I looked on Horizon hobby and they do not have the battery packs that match up exactly with these numbers, 600mAh, 9.6, 4.8 etc.

Do I have to have the exact same battery packs to run in these things? Any help would be appreciated. I don't know much about these things except what the control inputs on the transmitter does.

thanks

G'day Mate,
They don't have to match exactly, as long as the TX pack will plug in, inside your TX, with the right polarity, & they do vary quite a bit, you can use packs up to about 2000Mah, battery technology has improved over the years, but your charger will need to be on longer, to charge the larger pack.
Same for your RX pack, 1100Mah is pretty standard now @ 4.8 volts. But you can go much larger, but they weigh more, & will take your charger longer to charge.
As long as they are made for JR radio's you should have no problem.

Welcome back to flying and welcome to RCU!

One of the things that has happened while you were away is that battery technology has greatly improved. You can now buy 2000 mah or more NiMH battery packs that are the same size and weight as the NiCad packs you used to use. There are many choices for places to get batteries. Here's one:
[link=http://utopia.rcuniverse.com/adclickhomepagemv.php?clientid=310&dest=http://www.cheapbatterypacks.com]Cheap Battery Packs[/link].

It's important that the voltage on the replacement packs remains the same. When we say mAH, we're talking about the milliamp hours. That's a measure of how much juice the pack can hold. Your old packs are 600mAH, and the replacement packs you get should have at least this much capacity. Modern packs tend to have greater capacity without being heavier.

If I was you I would consider going a little bit bigger than the 600mAh. I am new to this as well, but I have started to use 1100mAh in 4.8v for the plane and I can get more flights per charge than I was with the 600mAh. For example when I used the 600Mah I would take three full flights and then stop or go to another plane, you could probably get more than three flights but I did not want to chance it. Now with the 1100mAh packs I am taking six flights per charge and I am still showing I have juice for another flight or more.

The same to the TX or 9.6mAh battery. Just a few days ago I made 14 flights using the same TX and I was still showing plenty I had plenty of juice to keep going. Look around and you will find the bigger nAm packs are not really that much more in cost, but they will take a little longer to fully charge than the smaller nAm packs and your standered wall charger will charge them.

Another option is to use two packs and two switches in the plane, I'll typically use two 600 mAh packs. All you have to do is plug the second pack/ switch into an open channel. The batteries need to be charged seperatly. Check the volts on each pack seperatly. To fly just turn on both switches, If you have a cell go bad in one pack during flight the second pack will act as a fail safe. The packs have to be the same voltage ie. 4.8 or 6 volts but pack capacity can be different.

Darren