KevinKRC
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Re:NiCd chargers - 2007/02/13 13:21
Hi Dick,
Welcome to the club.
I have been flying since 2000 and I bought an Accucycle charger from tower Hobbies. It is 110 volt, has two charging circuits, one for reciever packs and glow plug igniters 1, 4 and 5 cells and one for transmitter packs, 7 and 8 cells.
It has small switches to move between the voltages and another set of switches to slow charge at 50 Mamp or 125Mamp. I use the 50 Mamp for my Nicad packs and 125 Mamp for my Metal Ni-Hyd packs. It also has a discharge button for each circuit so that when you want to sysle your packs you hit this button and it drains the pack at 125 or 250 Mamps(another switch. Once the pack goes below 1.1 volts per cell it switches to slow charge mode. there is no fast charge option. It also switches to trickle charge once the slow charge cycle is complete. it also tells you how many minutes the drain down took so you can track the capacity of your packs.
It will not drain down a Futaba radio since they have a diode preventing that in the radio.
see link to accucycle below.
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXL357&P=ML
70 bucks , I think the price went down.
For my planes in storage I use the 50 mamp chargers on overnight timers, I run the charger for about two hours a night and that keeps a good pack fresh. I cycle the batteries in the spring and fall to see how their holding up.
Hope that gets you started.
Kevin 
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