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| My Blue solution |
Thursday, May 30, 2013
The Blue solution
The last time I was out and about with my KX3 my re-chargeable internal batteries let me down.........actually it was user error as I failed to charge them the evening before. Planing is everything they say so the spur of the moment thought of taking my KX3 to the field did not work out so well for me! The weather forecast has been known to change from rain to sunshine on any given day. To me that is translated as a non KX3 day thats transformed to a perfect KX3 outing day. To avoid my radio let down I went online and ordered a 12 volt portable 9800Ah Li-ion rechargeable battery pack. It has a wall wart for charging and seems to be a nice little unit. Larry W2LJ has the same pack and it seems to be working well for him. This
way next time when the internal KX3 batteries TRY to let me down......I will plug in the "Blue solution" As a side note Elecraft offers (which I purchased) an internal battery charger called the KXBC3. This way you can load the KX3 with rechargeable batteries and just plug the KX3 into your power supply and have the KX3 charge the batteries on it's internal timer. Unfortunately this unit does not (as of yet.... but I'm hoping) have the ability to trickle charge the internal batteries. This way it's always ready to go! That is the only downfall to the KXBC3 I have found.
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4 comments:
Hello Mike,
I wouldn't hold your breath on these Chinese 'blue' batteries. Most people are finding that these only put out 55-60% of what they're rated for right out of the gate, often much less and are easily damaged by discharging too rapidly, rendering them even more compromised. It's true they're inexpensive but I hope people don't promote them for ham usage just yet. If you're working a few stations during your lunch hour or for an hour or two on the weekend in the park it's one thing, but after hiking 5 miles and then finding that your battery just died after 2 hours, that's another thing altogether. I will be anxious to hear how it works for you under real usage conditions, please let us know.
73, Ed
Good morning Ed, you bring up some very good points and some I had though of before ordering the unit. I will have to give the unit a go (once it arrives) seems this thing is a on a very slow boat from China. As I start using the unit I will give my impressions in a post.
Thanks for your input and for stopping by the blog.
Have a good weekend Ed
Mike
Hi Mike, I just use one of those cheap 7Ah 12V batteries. They are on the market here for just around 25 euro. Together with a cheap 3W solar charge panel it does the job for my FT817. Hope the blue box will do it for you. 73, Bas
Good Saturday morning Bas, I have read in your blog from time to time regarding your solar efforts and that is a very nice idea. I will see how this battery work for me and as of yet for some reason I can't seem to track it online with Ebay! So maybe I will just request my money be returned from PayPal if there is nothing by the end of this week.
Mike
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