One thing about me, and maybe it's in my Polish genes, I can be stubborn at times.
Case in point, I really didn't understand how that PowerWerx deep cycle battery could go bad in just a year. It was purchased new, and has not gone through many recharge cycles at all.
I decided to hook it up to my older ACME SLA charger. I figured that I didn't have anything to lose, even though my new fangled "smart charger" was telling me the battery would not accept a charge.
As soon as I hooked it up, the indicator on the ACME glowed amber. This means the battery was not full and was accepting a charge. After some time, it eventually turned to green, meaning the battery is fully charged and was then in a trickle charge state.
So now the conundrum. Bad battery, or bad charger? I'm going to give it some work and see how long it's legs last. If it doesn't crap out on me and holds its charge well, I'm going to have to assume it's the charger.
During the middle of the night on Saturday/Sunday, I got a low battery voltage warning on the KX3. That struck me as odd, as I had recently charged up my 12V 10 Ah battery. I was expecting it to last the entirety of Field Day. But in the heat of battle you really don't think twice about it, so I took it off line and hastily replaced with a recently purchased 12v 5 Ah battery that I had gotten about two weeks ago. THAT battery lasted the second half of Field Day without a whimper.
When I got home from work on Monday, I put the 10 Ah battery on my charger and was getting a battery failure indication. It was reading at a level of 10V and 0% capacity and would not accept a charge, I was wondering how can this be? It was purchased new and I haven't put it through nearly enough cycles to have exhausted it. I figured it must be a battery charger fault, so I hooked up the 5 Ah battery to the charger to see what it said. The 5 Ah (which was in use for roughly the same amount of time, if not more) was down to only 11.8 Volts and had 89% capacity left in it! And the charger's fan started running as soon as I hooked it up.
No charger fault - I got a bad 12V 10 Ah battery. Dang!
I don't remember where I purchased it, whether it was from eBay or Amazon, but it doesn't matter. Its not like you can return a battery some 11 months after you've bought it online. I had purchased it after the 2023 Skeeter Hunt when my last deep cycle battery gave up the ghost. I don't want to be scrambling for electrons during the Hunt this year, so I went on eBay and found an economically (cheaply) priced 12V 10 Ah Deep Cycle Gel Cell battery.
I know, you guys are probably thinking, why didn't he go lithium? Price mainly, but also because I don't feel like purchasing a dedicated lithium battery charger. I once ruined a small lithium battery by not using the correct charger on it and I don't want to relive that escapade. I learned that lesson well. However, should this battery not last longer than a cycle or two, I guess I'll bite the bullet. Maybe spending a little more right now would be the right thing to do in the long run, but I guess I'm too frugal to have reached that point yet.
It should be at my house in about a week - long before it's needed for the Skeeter Hunt on August 18th - which, by the way, we've had 93 sign ups so far and the 1st Day of Summer was only 6 days ago!
And looky see what came in the mail yesterday!
Not an ATNO, but an ATNC - All Time New Confirmation. I've worked Easter Island before, but never got a QSL card.
The best of times. Battery technology has made huge advances in a relatively short amount of time. When batteries started being commercially produced in the early 1900s, lead acid or “wet cell” batteries were the only option. “Dry cell” batteries were made too, but they were for small applications such... Read more »
A higher capacity battery was on my mind when I saw a posting on a POTA forum by
Will K4BDA. Will noted the huge price difference between a 20AH Bioenno and a
20AH Nermak. With one being over 4 times the price of the other, I
decided to give the Nermak a shot. For a bit over a year now, I've had a Bioenno and a Nermak battery - both are 12AH - and have used them at least weekly for POTA
I know there are a lot of Baofeng haters out there, but ......... for the limited time I spend on VHF/UHF, I'd rather put the big bucks into HF gear or accessories.
I purchased this Baofeng K5 Plus after hearing glowing reports on the nightly Middlesex County Chat Group Net from two local Hams for whom I have deep respect, Marv K2VHW and Dave K2ULF. $29.00 from Amazon - how could you go wrong? I was ordering a new cordless phone for the house (yes, we still maintain a landline) on Sunday and decided "Why not?" and added it to My Cart. I was surprised as all get out when both the phone and the HT arrived the next afternoon, and I did not pay for expedited shipping!
The main reason I purchased it is because it is a tri-band radio including the 1.25 Meter band - 220 MHz. I do own a dedicated 220 HT, but it's so much more convenient to have all three bands in one radio - no juggling required. Last night I successfully programmed in the NJ2EM repeater, which is owned and operated by the NJ State Police and is one of our main ways of communicating with them via Amateur Radio on behalf of Middlesex County AUXCOMM. The repeater is down the road a ways - pretty close to Trenton. Even so, I was able to raise the repeater and the S-Meter on the radio was almost full scale as it identified. That's not hard to believe as their antenna is near the top of the old UHF TV Channel 52 tower, which has to be one of the tallest in the state. It truly has statewide coverage, as during monthly "test nets" I have heard every county in New Jersey check in without difficulty.
I did not purchase a programming cable and had a little trepidation about that. I was relieved to discover that manually entering repeater information is quite intuitive and not complicated at all, and once you've programmed in a memory or two, it gets even easier. When you use CHIRP, it's so easy to fill up memories with repeaters you never frequent, or are perhaps almost dead for the amount of inactivity on them. Manually programming the radio may take a bit more time and effort, but it should eliminate needless frequencies
Another neat thing about the radio is that when you press the "0" key for about three seconds, the most local NOAA weather station will pop on. I used to program that into my hand helds, but it became a nuisance when you go into scan mode and the scanning stops whenever you come to that memory. Another thing that I really like about this HT is that charging can be accomplished via a USB-C port that is located on the battery. I can charge my phone AND my HT from the multi-device charger that we have in our kitchen. Of course, the radio comes with the standard drop-in charger for "conventional" charging as well. I'm sure there are other features that I will come to know and appreciate as I use it more and more.
There is one thing about this radio that exacerbates my OCD. The "EXIT" button that you press to get out of the menus is actually screened on the key as "EIXT". I noticed that pretty much right off the bat as my brain went into "What !?!?!: mode.
This tutorial demonstrates how to connect two 12-volt batteries in parallel using Power Queen 12.8V, 100Ah, 1280Wh lithium iron phosphate batteries. The provided YouTube link offers a detailed guide. For related content, explore building a solar-powered Off-Grid Ham Radio Station and information on radio-friendly MPPT charge controllers and off-grid communications.
Exponential market growth! Lithium battery technology has made exponential market penetration in the last decade or so. Once an exotic and expensive platform, today nearly every battery-powered device uses lithium. Along with increased market acceptance comes attention, both good and bad. Most of the bad news circulating about lithium batteries... Read more »
I recently replaced the battery on my motorcycle and noticed that I had many choices of lead-acid or lithium-based batteries (Li-Ion or LiFePO4). I bought a tried-and-true Yuasa lead-acid battery but then wondered: Are lithium batteries available for (non-electric) cars?Short answer: Yes, they are ($$$$$).Why would I (briefly) consider one? Because I sometimes do POTA activations from the
When you want to expand your battery capacity. Off grid ham radio has an addictive quality about it. You tell yourself, “I’ll get a modest battery and solar panel and just fool around a little bit. I’m not too serious about this,” thinking that’s as far as you’ll ever go.... Read more »
Graduation time. A lot of if not most off grid hams have only one battery in their system. Connecting a single battery is more or less self-explanatory. What should you do when you expand your system to include multiple batteries? Should they be in series? In parallel? Is one way... Read more »
It cannot be avoided… Batteries are arguably the weakest link in the off grid radio chain. Solar panels, controllers, connecting cables, and almost everything else can last years, even decades. But batteries are a consumable product and no matter how good yours are, it’s almost certain they will not last... Read more »
Mother Nature flips the switch. Where I live in the upper Midwest USA, we were unusually lucky to have an extended warm Fall season. In early November we were still seeing highs over 70F (21C). I was raking leaves wearing shorts and a t-shirt! But ahhh yes, everyone knew the... Read more »
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