Newbie help needed.......

[Justarting]

Ok, I have been reading here before posting. Now I am a little confused on what to do. I am coming back to the RC game after several years. I recently bought a Slash 2wd for my son from a member here that was getting out of the game. I need to buy batteries for the truck, receiver. I also need to buy a charger. I am in the Army so I don't have a lot of cash to throw at it for now.
Below is my list of questions:
1) I would like to go all rechargeable on all the batteries, what do you recommend? ( receiver and truck )
2) What size of batteries for the truck and how long will they last? ( I know it will depend on usage, average times are fine )
3) How long will they take to charge?
4) What dual charger do I need? ( A good all around one that has a over protective circuit built in )
5) What is a balancer?
6) What else do I need to know or be asking about when it comes to batteries and charging?

Thanks for all of the help.

[Justarting]

I can't seem to edit my post, so here goes.

2) I am going NiMH for now, still deciding on 6-7 cell, not sure of voltage, and somewhere around 3300 to 4400 mah?
4) I have read that you cannot dual charge NiMH.
5) No balancer needed for NiMH, LiPO only.
What charger would work for a NiMH battery at 2-2.5 volts and not go up in smoke?

[JDGecko]

I too just returned to the scene. This is what I did for me and my brother-in-law. I have a Losi XXX-T and he has a Slash 4x4. We, for now, run 7 cell NiMh (5000Mah) and are both brushless motors. I'd say we got a got 18-20 minutes run time (bashing)on those. Since the chargers were pretty inexpensive, I bought 2, one right away and one about a month later. The batteries take about an hour to charge.

In my experience, with NiMh you really can't screw it up. It's when you go to LiPo you need to be picky and do your research. That will be the realm we go into this spring.

Hope this helps!

[shagnat]

You'll be glad when you go LiPo, and it's great you already know to do research.