There are many reasons why I prefer to use AA batteries. The batteries themselves and the chargers are all inexpensive and widely available. The AAs have crazy long run times. Other batteries will have better performance but increasing performance is not always the goal. In our case we have a private track and a consistent group of racers, and our goal is to keep the cars dead even and their speed appropriate for the track proportions. In our case that means 4 AAs and stock motors since our track is really tight and we are running with 5 or 6 cars. We still adjust our cars for handling however we see fit, but we all agree to use the same batteries and motors. Since we have this agreement and don't need to increase performance, we might as well take the benefits of the AAs.
Even if you are just driving by yourself though, and looking for a cheap way to make your car significantly faster, you can just wire up a couple more AA cells, to get from 4 to 5 or 6 cells (ie Silver Supra's "ghetto AA 5-cell"), and increase your speed by nearly 50% for how much? $10? $20 Throw in a faster motor for another $20. Or you can spend well over $100 on fancy batteries and the required chargers.
Keep in mind, the participants in this hobby range from actual kidds who start with nothing more than the RTR Mircro RS4 they got for xmas and a $5 allowance, to bigger kidds with jobs and money, to people who have been doing it for decades and have plenty of money and anyways already have plenty of fancy batteries and chargers and electornics laying around from other scales or types of RC.
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