radio plays with no key

[scherry2]

last night my son and I got out some R/C cars my father and I had when I was 20 something. I got out the slow charger last night and slow charged an old 7.2 ni-cad and it held a charge, so today we played. I got out a quck charger and pluged a battery in and plugged it in the cigarette lighter and the radio started playing I unplugged the quick charger and the radio quit. I'm guessing that the radio is running on the residual power in the Ni-Cad battery.now I tried the same thing on my wifes 2004 malibu and it doesn't do it so my question is: why is it doing it? and who came up with that Idea? I tell you I was shocked when the radio was playing, the key wasn't in the Ignition and the door was open.

[ColonelPanic]

I know they've been selling those "memory saver" thingies for a while now that you plug a 9V into and it plug it into the lighter so the radio/etc. doesn't lose its settings... I guess it could be considered along the same line as those things, feeding juice back into the electrical system... I didn't think those worked though. I don't know why you had the radio operating with no ignition though. It must have picked up on the voltage sent through by the RC car battery and it was enough to make things turn on, the system assumed the ignition was on..That freaky. And cool.