Battery health tesing

wrote:
I'm wondering if there's a simple or straightforward way to test an SLA
battery for general condition. Or a device I can buy that sucks a
charge out of a battery over a few hours and reports its actual
amp-hour capacity?

The model car/airplane folks have battery testers/chargers that will do
this, but I haven't seriously looked for one.

The other posters have mentioned load testing, which is what I do with
my batteries, but I'm a geeky former electrical engineer and enjoy that.

If you are talking about the typical $15-$20 12 volt, 7 ah glider
battery, there are other approaches that take advantage of their low cost:

* if you think it's down on capacity, get a new one.
* if it's more than 3 years old, get a new one.
* and for the truly frugal, wait until the first time it fails/almost
fails in flight, and get a new one. Not a bad technique for someone with
two batteries in the glider.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

Eric Greenwell wrote:
wrote:
I'm wondering if there's a simple or straightforward way to test an SLA
battery for general condition. Or a device I can buy that sucks a
charge out of a battery over a few hours and reports its actual
amp-hour capacity?

The model car/airplane folks have battery testers/chargers that will do
this, but I haven't seriously looked for one.

The other posters have mentioned load testing, which is what I do with
my batteries, but I'm a geeky former electrical engineer and enjoy that.

If you are talking about the typical $15-$20 12 volt, 7 ah glider
battery, there are other approaches that take advantage of their low cost:

* if you think it's down on capacity, get a new one.
* if it's more than 3 years old, get a new one.
* and for the truly frugal, wait until the first time it fails/almost
fails in flight, and get a new one. Not a bad technique for someone with
two batteries in the glider.

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

I have had been very happy with the CBAII computerized battery analyzer
from Westmountainradio.com. Click the RC Model Products button on the
left of the page.

It runs abou $100 and hooks to a PC to plot discharge curves.

They also offer the whatthour meter which provides load information.

More expensive solutions than some others suggested here, but very
convenient and easy to use.