JPerrone

My HiTec Laser 4 battery charger seems to have bit the dust; both Rx and Tx side. I can charge the battery for the Rx directly using a Futaba charger I believe.

I think because of the positive vs. negative shift, I can't use that Futaba charger to charge my HiTec Tx. But I think the HiTec has a NiCd battery pack in it; can't I just pull it out of the box and charge it directly?

I don't know what this positive and negative shift mean at all

Thanks and regards

mrasmm

hehe, it's all good. Both futaba and hitec are negative shift, but that has more to do with the crystal and the signal than the battery. If I remember right though hitec's charge jack is reverse of futaba's, although about the same size.

Yeah you should be able to take it out and charge it up just fine as long as you have the correct polarity and adaptor to hook it up to your charger.. NiCd's charge real close to NiMH's, especially if you are using a wall wart type charger.

Hopefully that answers your q's =)

pilotpete2

Hi,
First off the positive and negative shift have to do with the way that the FM carrier is modulated, only has to do with matching receivers to transmitters, not an issue here.
Only JR/Spektrum radios have the Tx charge jack with reversed polarity, that is negative on the center pin, the rest use the center pin for the positve connection, though there is no standardization between brands as far as dimensions go, for instance an Airtronics charge plug will not fit a Futaba Tx, the Futaba plug will fit the Airtronics Tx, but loosely.
Give the Futaba charger a try on your Hitec Tx, if the plug fits (I don't have one to try) it should be fine.
Pete

Rodney

The polarity of the Hitec and Futaba chargers is identical (both have the center terminal positive and the shell negative); what is not same is the size of the connector for charging the transmitter. Hitec uses a 5mm 0D 2.1mmID connector and Futaba uses a 5.5mm OD and 3.5 mm ID connector. You can buy the connectors at Radio shack Part No. RS 274-1567 for the Hitec transmitter and part no. RS 274-1573 for the Futaba. If you are handy with a soldering iron, you can solder both connectors in parallel on either the Hitec charger or Futaba charger and use it for charging either unit. The bit about different shifts has nothing to do with the charging of either unit.

Mike in DC

I'm not sure what you mean by "charge it directly". Your Hitec transmitter battery does come out, but the plug on it won't fit the transmitter plug on your Futaba charger. Actually, it might fit the receiver plug, but you can't charge it with the receiver wire coming out of the wall wart because the receiver battery is 4 cells, and the transmitter battery is 8 cells.