With the help of a friend, i have finally made the jump into this hobby. I have an Easystar that i has two flights on it now. Pretty good success flying it with help. Anyways, my transmitter is a Hitec Flash 5x and My question has to do with recharging of the transmitter battery. Since it has NiCad cells, shouldn't I discharge it before powering it back up? Should i just leave the transmitter on at my house until the low battery alarm goes off? Should I try to make a connector and discharge it with my Triton (how would i do that)?

There is no reason to discharge your battery prior to charging. Never leave your radio on to drain your batteries.

It is good to check your battery capacity a couple of times a season. That's the way to see if your batteries are still up to snuff.

Use the search function, on the forums, to get lots of good reading on the subject.

Enjoy the hobby, it's great.

Agreed. The only time you need to discharge your battery is to periodically check its health/capacity.

You can charge and discharge the pack with your Triton, but it needs to be removed from the transmitter. There is a diode built into the transmitter that prevents damage to the radio if you accidentally hook up the charger backwards. That diode prevents the Triton from reading the pack's voltage during charge, so it can't peak detect.

What you need is the mating connector for the one on the battery pack, a set of banana plugs, and maybe some wire. The last time I had access to a Flash series transmitter, they had a non-standard plug, and I was unable to source the mating plug for it from a hobby source, though. Instead, I used a servo extension, pulling the "boot" off the female lead, and popping the signal pin out. The exposed + and - pins fit perfectly into the plug.

Thanks for the information guys. Now I just need to get out and use those batteries more often. Idle thumbs are the devils playground.

You can buy the lead for the battery at [link=http://www.servocity.com/html/transmitter_wiring.html]ServoCity[/link]. The first one on the page is the one you would want if you want to charge the battery externally.