My friend powered up the Victor Engineering charger given to me by another friend and doggoned if it didn't work! Even the reverse polarity function worked. He tried it with an emergency jump starting unit. The input range is up to 16VDC, so an ordinary battery or a jumper pack will have plenty of oomph.

Next step is to connect it to my car's battery and give a discharged ni-cad a try. It accepts standard banana plugs, so that's not an issue since I have connectors. I'll even try the meter function with a digital multimeter just for giggles.

An old friend dropped off a bit of R/C racing history earlier today here at work.

I am now the proud owner of a genuine Victor Engineering HI-IQ Sr. ni-cad charger. This computerized beauty made right here in Southern California was the creme de la creme of chargers at one time. This little fella is complete down to the original, unused Victor Engineering sticker.

My coworker got a real kick out of the unit; she was born and raised in San Clemente!

I'll ask my friend the broadcast engineer to put some power into the thing. I'm certain it'll work and I may use it to charge batteries for my grandson's Arrma Granite truck, that is, once I pin down a power supply.

This may turn out to be a lot of fun and I'll blog more about it later.

PS: If there are any collectors interested in this unit once I determine how it operates, please feel free to PM or email me.