One piece of very good advice is to remove the battery from the airplane before charging, and then charge it in a fireproof container of some sort. I used to put the battery in a covered Pyrex dish, but lately I've been following Fred Marks' advice and sticking the battery in our oven.
However, the key to all of this is having an efficient way to remove and reinstall the battery.
I personally do not like hook-and-loop fasteners such as "Velcro" for this purpose. They're bulky, can be relatively heavy, and really are not all that secure, especially at the "G" forces that some of our more aerobatic Roadkill Series models can pull with a 3-cell pack. Some of the things I do with the Triplane, the Ryan ST or some of the others currently in development could quite conceivably pull a battery loose from a piece of Velcro. Tape is lighter and more secure, but is definitely not very convenient for removing and reinstalling the battery.
Instead, we came up with a neat little laser-cut plywood plate that glues or tapes to the battery. The ply plate has keyhole slots in it for slipping onto two small screws. Just loosen the screws half a turn each, and you can slip the battery off of the screws through the keyhole slots in the plate. After charging, just slip the plate back into place and tighten the screws back down. Quick, simple, light and very secure.
The mounting kit is designed to adapt to a variety of battery sizes, up through about 1200 mah 3-cell packs. The big factor is the amount of weight you can safely support with the mounting plate; with enough additional mounting plates you can probably support larger batteries.
The mounting kit includes CAD-drawn instructions, the battery mounting plate, two screws and a pair of plywood plates to glue to the model to hold the screws if the surface you're mounting to is something that won't hold screws by itself, such as balsa. Retail price is $1.25 plus shipping, and dealer inquiries are welcome.
The mounting kit can probably be used for convenient mounting of other types of components as well, such as small servos. I'll leave that up to your ingenuity.
For more info, photos and ordering, please visit the "Products" section of our website.
Don Stackhouse @ DJ Aerotech [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.djaerotech.com
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