I've got a hobbico quick charger. Just need some basic info. How long do I charge my battieries(4 cell Rx) and a regular transmitter.

Is there some automatic cutoff on this box so I don't always need to monitor my batteries?

And Speaking of monitoring, at what voltage do my batteries need to be charged?

Much Thanks!

the absolute best way to charge is to charge overnight using the wall wart charger that comes with the system.
Always charge every time before you fly, even if the previous time you only flew one or two flights.
If you are monitoring at the field, you should re-charge when the receiver drops to 4.6 under load and the transmitter drops to 9.4 under load. (assumes 300 mA load)

yes the best way is with the included trickle charger, i charge mine overnight before i fly even if i flew once,

Happy Charging!

I did a search in Tower for your "Hobbico Quick Charger" and got two hits. What is the full name of your charger?

One had no variable settings possible so I'm guessing you've got the other one. http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXCTZ5&P=ML
It has a dial that you set the charging amperage. No other inputs are required.

The recommended way to quick charge any NiCd RX or TX battery is to start from the rated capacity of the battery. You have to look at the value printed on the battery pack to know it's capacity.

A lot of radio systems are sold with a 600mAh RX battery pack and a 600, 800, or 1100mAh TX pack. Let's say you have a 600mAh RX and 1100mAh TX.

The recommended fast charge rate for a quick charge that does not stress the batteries is a 1C charge rate. That "1C" means 1 times the pack's rated capacity in Amps.

If your RX pack is a 600mAh pack, it's also a .6AMP pack. So it's rating in Amps is .6. And one times .6 is .6 So to charge the RX pack, set the dial to .6 or the closest setting to that.

If your TX pack is a 1100mAh pack, it's also a 1.1Amp pack. Set the charger to 1.1Amp for that one.

Since the charger information says that charger fast charges to the capacity and then trickle charges, a good way to maintain your batteries is to hook 'em up after use, and check 'em a sometime later, like a couple of hours.

Thats exactly what I was looking for!

Much Thanks Guys!

To add to what Da said.
Take the batteries capacity in mah and divide by the charge rate in ma or Amps to get required charge time.
Examples:
1,000 mah battery charged at 500ma or .5 Amps will take 2 hours to charge
1,500 mah battery charged at 500 ma will take 3 hours to charge.
600 mah battery charged at 50ma (typical wallwart charger amperage) will take 12 hours to charge.
Constantly fast charging a battery will shorten its lifespan, IMO fast charging should only be done sparingly, slow charge overnight, like other have said, is best.

I agree that slow charging with the mfg provided wall-wart is best whenever possible. If you are done flying for the day, take it home and slow charge it overnight the night before you fly next. Fast charge only when you need to.

There is an extremely valuable thing that the better "quick" chargers do for you. My AccuCycleElite and TritonII both are considered to be quick chargers by the guys at the field. I consider them to be "information" chargers.

They give you a readout of how much capacity they replaced. This is absolutely awesome information.

When I get home from the field, I recharge everything I flew. One reason is because it's still fresh in my mind how much and how hard I flew each airplane and transmitter. When I see the readouts, I have an excellent look at how that battery responded to what I threw at it. I can't get that from wall warts. And you have no idea if the wall wart has recharged a battery that is losing it's capacity or has started dropping a cell.

And there is no rule that the intelligent chargers be set to quick charge.
Most trickle chargers or wall warts are set at 1/10C. And a lot of professional advice is that 1C is a safe "quick" charge. But there really are no rules you have to follow. So I set my intelligent chargers for .5C. When I get home, I plug in whatever I flew, and go wash up for supper. After supper, or sometime before hitting the sack, I swing by the chargers and check 'em out. The batteries are almost always topped off after supper is done. And any that show they took too little or too much charge for how I flew them get swapped out. There is no time pressure then, so it gets done for sure. I have a couple of extra packs that are on the rotation. Any pack that looked kinky then goes on one of the intelligent chargers for a cycle or two. That can be done overnight if I wish. And the readout of the cycle job tells me how that battery is doing.

And everything I got is ready to go fly for at least the next few days. If I don't go fly for awhile, and suddenly decide I gotta go, I can slap the chargers on and top 'em off in a heartbeat. And btw, that topoff has spotted a bad battery for me. It should have been close to fully charged, but didn't top off quickly. So I swapped it out with a ready pack, topped the ready off and went flying. While I was gone, the bad one was on the cycle cycle. When I came home, I discovered it'd lost a bunch of capacity. Further cycling didn't bring it back. It got canned instead of the airplane it would have trashed.

There are also cycle chargers. These cycle chargers, and I am pretty sure Da Rock's AccuCycle and am sure that the Triton, are both cycle chargers. What this does for you is to allow you to discharge a battery then recharge it. This does a few things for you. First, with NiCd's, it will remove any tendency to have 'charge memory' which can hurt a battery. This is the tendency for a battery to not fully charge after a number of limited discharges. Cycling the battery fully discharges it, then recharges it. Repeated cycle, say three or four times during a period of a couple of days, will remove this memory tendency and usually restore the battery to almost, if not all, it's original capacity.

The other point that Da Rock brought up is a good one. That is that with some of these chargers, you get the digital indication of just how much current was put back in the battery after the recharge is complete, even if you do not cycle it. This will give you some knowledge about just how much of that valuable current you used during a flying session (or flying afternoon session.. whatever). And, with some chargers, the Sirius for instance, will give you an indication of a problem that may exist in a battery pack.

I have the AccuCycle (not the elite, but an older one), a Triton, an ICE, and two Sirius chargers as well as the Sirius discharger (with digital readout). The Triton, Ice, and Sirius are all powered by 12 volts DC and are considered field chargers, where the AccuCycle (my version anyway) is a bench top type charger that requires it to be plugged into the household AC source.