| Well, I've started building again (after a hiatus of several years spent | skydiving). I see NiMH batteries in the hobby stores now. | | Are there any on-line articles on the care and feeding of NiMH | batteries? Are they as reliable as NiCds? If I re-equip my models with | NiMHs, will I need to buy a special charger? Etc.?
To expand on what the other poster posted about
formatting link
...
They're perhaps a little less reliable than NiCds -- they don't last quite as many cycles, and handle abuse less well. And their rate of self-discharge is a good deal faster than that of NiCd. But the increased capacity helps make up for it.
If you have a fast charger, it needs to be able to charge NiMH cells
-- not all can. Your slow wal-wart charger will work fine with them, but will take longer to do a full charge -- if the battery has 3x the capacity, like 600 mAh vs. 1800 mAh, a full charge will take 3x as long.
Oh, and you can't safely charge AA NiMH cells at more than 1 C.
NiMH cells are *perfect* for your transmitter. The only downside is not being able to quick charge at 2 C -- but having 2-3x the capacity helps make up for that.
For a receiver pack, they're good, but there's a few gotchas -- they have higher internal resistance, so they can't provide as much power. Normally this isn't a problem, but if your servos draw a whole lot of power (like with a stalled digital servo) it may be one. Cushioning them against vibration is more important as well.
For a power pack, be aware that NiMH cells have higher resistance, so they may not be able to dump as much power in a short time.