Battery City

Progress, of sorts.

I think that the little SLA that I used on Sunday is OK. I put it on my little ACME battery charger (No. I did not get it from Wile. E. Coyote!) Sunday evening and the voltage indicator light changed from amber to green overnight. I checked the voltage again when I got home from work last night and it was still holding steady at 12.9 Volts, so I don't think it's internally discharging at any great rate.  Of course the proof of the pudding will occur when I attach the KX3 to it to see how it handles a load. I'm kind of confident in this one, though.

The bigger SLA has been charging for two overnights (6:00 PM to 5:00 AM) now. I don't run the charger during the day when no one is home - call me overly cautious. It still has not changed from amber to green, which I thought it would have by now. That indicates to me that something might not be up to snuff - but I'll give it a bit more time. I have a feeling it's lost some capacity to actually hold a charge. While on the charger the battery is cool to the touch, though, so it's not like it's going to burst into flames or anything. Again, I'll have to closely monitor the voltage drop if and when I connect it to the KX3.

The big deep cycle Powerwerx battery - not sure what to do there. I'm going to attempt to charge it up once again this weekend and will monitor the voltage drop under load. I still have a feeling this one is shot.

To that end, I purchased a deep cycle 12 Ah Li-ion battery and charger through eBay.  I put a bid on it the other day and quickly got outbid. The auction ended at 10:00 PM last night and with about 4 minutes to go, I upped my original bid by $ 4.00.  Luckily, that was enough to win, and it should be here by the end of next week - maybe as early as this coming Friday.

In any case, going forward, I will have that battery, and the smaller SLA in the ammo box. I will also have another small, cell phone sized "blue pack" battery in the backpack. With all three, I should have plenty of electrons for any POTA outing, QRP Sprint and even for Field Day.

Funny - when I just mentioned the "blue pack" battery, I was originally going to describe it as "about the size of a pack of cigarettes". How times have changed! I think there's probably more folks out there who have never purchased a pack of cigarettes than there are that have.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!