I have a maintenance cycle for my batteries. About once a quarter, I cycle each battery and make sure I top it off with a trickle charge. I do this with other batteries around the house, too.

I do it about once a year, I use a PRO-PEAK ProdigyII digital charger/discharger it does a bang up job of charging and cycling batterys, I can program it to do multi cycles if I want to, some batterys seem to do better if you cycle them a couple of times, it scrambles there memory[sm=spinnyeyes.gif] even though most batterys dont have memory problems any more

funny thing I just came across a couple of less used batterys in a box I cycled them a couple of times and they seem to be doing well, after a few days there still holding a full charge saved me a few bucks, since I have a couple of planes that they will work well in.

With imited space in my house and garage [now cabinet shop], I keep almost all of my planes and gear in a 5' x 9' cargo trailer so have set myself a limit of 4 planes at any given time. Not to say that won't go up if I have room but for now keeping 4 flying is all I can do. With my budget, reusing gear is not an option, it must be done. Most of my gear and planes are used but I make sure they are in tip top shape. Transmitter is very old 72MH Futaba which I sent in for refurb shortly after buying which camne with four receivers.

Gary

For electrical models, I have seen some pilots using a power-control module that they move form model to model of similar dimensions.

That module contains a motor, esc, Rx and battery, and slides into the nose of each model.
Then, the servos of each model are connected to the Rx.

That's quite an addiction (that I'm glad you have under control!)