Be careful about charging batteries within the radio. It has a dumb charger
only regulated by time. After a few charge cycles your batteries will
probably not perform to their potential. That can be a problem because this
model radio goes through batteries in a hurry. After a while there will
probably be one battery that will not fully charge and maybe another that
will over charge. It's recommended to get a good battery charger.

I use this battery charger:

http://www.thomas-distributing.com/mhc401fs.htm

It's slow charge option is a good match for the Degen 1300mAh batteries that
came with my radio. The batteries won't fry, and each one gets monitored
separately so that all four get a full charge.

I charged my batteries with a dumb charger a few times before getting the
Powerex charger. On the first use with the Powerex charger, I found that
one battery took much longer to charge than the rest. After a few cycles
the charge time evened out amongst the four batteries and I now get longer
playtime.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Based on positive reviews here and elsewhere, and deciding I could live
with its ergonomic idiosyncracies, I just bought a new Kaito KA1103.
So far, I like it well enough, and the ergonomics are even a little
charming. But I have a question about using the radio itself to charge
the included NiMH batteries. It's not clear to me how long to set the
charging timer for, nor whether there is a risk of damage if the
batteries are charged for too long. The spartan "manual" gives a
formula of battery mAh / 100 for the # hours to charge, which in this
particular case of 4 x 1300 mAh batteries is 52 hours? But the maximum
charge time you can set is 23 hours. Does anyone have prior experience
charging the KA1103? After playing with the radio for an hour, the
battery indicator hit the 25% full mark, and I decided to charge them
for 10 hours, based on nothing in particular. Is this too long? Too
short? Anyone know?