About 3 years ago I picked up a lipo battery for my JR max 66 Tx to replace the nicad it came with. The OE battery would only hold a charge for very limited amount of time, so I ignored all the warnings a tried a Tx specific lipo from Himodels. 3 years down the track, and it still holds its' charge far better than the original one, with no problems encountered. Encouraged, I went one step further. Having basically changed over to 2.4 for everything, I decided to pull apart one of my budget priced "Radiolink" Tx's that I bought from Lowpricerc. This entry level futaba clone ( or a re-badged one, I'm not sure
) uses 8 AA batteries, and actually works quite well. I stupidly left it outside one evening, turned on, to retrieve a plane out of a tree, and it subsequently rained all night
To cut a long story short, I dried it all out, and while pulled apart, I removed the power wires with a soldering iron, and put on a two pin jack compatible with the battery from the JR. The Battery won't fit inside the original battery compartment, so I drilled a hole for the wires to run through, and mounted the lipo externally, using gorilla tape. A little ugly, but practical, and showing a charge of over 11 volts after many hours of use
. The AA's lose their charge much more quickly. I'm only using it on one of my electric sailplanes that doubles as a trainer, until I'm convinced it won't cause any glitches. Lets see how it goes
....cheers..