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RC Airplane Battery

Care Tips and Purchasing help

An RC battery can either be a NiCad or NiMH celled battery, most commonly NiCad though. It is very important to take care of your batteries, because not doing so will result in gradual power loss and it could even stop working. Let’s go through some procedures that you should follow to make sure you bet the most out of your batteries.

NiCad batteries

A RC battery must be able to withstand harsh conditions. The average pilot requires massive current-drawing loads when flying, and want to be able to recharge in 15 to 20 minutes. The only type of RC airplane battery that can withstand this kind of treatment are rapid discharge NiCad cells.

A very important care tip for NiCad batteries is to fully discharge the battery before recharging. That means to let the battery completely run out of power before you recharge. If you do not, your battery will develop the memory effect. The memory effect works like this. Let’s say you fully charge your battery, and then you use only half of the power in it.



If you go to recharge it again, the part that still has power in it will crystallize. When it is crystallized, it can’t be used anymore. So basically you would lose half of your battery. If you would keep doing that, then eventually your battery will never hold a charge.

Another tip you should know is too keep your NiCad battery away from moisture and heat. Just keep it in a cool dry place.

To make sure you fully discharge your battery, just run the airplanes electric motor until it stops and won’t start again.

NiMH batteries

NiMH cell batteries are the newest innovation of batteries, and are better then NiCad in many ways. NiMH batteries don’t suffer from the memory effect, and they last twice as long as NiCad’s.

Since NiMH batteries are so easy to maintain, all you really have to do is keep them in a cool dry place and don’t trickle charge them. A recommendation for NiMH batteries is to run them more then once a day. This will keep the cells fresh and improve your batteries life.

Where to Buy

If you would like to purchase a battery for RC plane or another RC toy, then you should check out these RC battery products.
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