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#1
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Battery Charger
Hey there probably hasnt been a Battery thread for a few months so here
goes! A quick search of the group didnt find what I was looking for. Im gonna be buying a a 12 Volt 8 Ah gel cell for the Cherokee to run the fancypants electronics I got for christmas. Need a charger. The place Im getting the battery from has a 12V 500 mAh and 12V 1 mAh charger for the battery. Both are dual stage. They also have 3 stage and unregulated. I think i remember conversation that the multiple stages are better because it gives a fuller charge. whats the various mAh ratings mean? charging speed? is slower better? Thanks! |
#2
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Battery Charger
Hi,
I give some information about battery chargers on my Batteries page he http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/batteries.htm Good Soaring, Paul Remde Cumulus Soaring, Inc. http://www.cumulus-soaring.com wrote in message oups.com... Hey there probably hasnt been a Battery thread for a few months so here goes! A quick search of the group didnt find what I was looking for. Im gonna be buying a a 12 Volt 8 Ah gel cell for the Cherokee to run the fancypants electronics I got for christmas. Need a charger. The place Im getting the battery from has a 12V 500 mAh and 12V 1 mAh charger for the battery. Both are dual stage. They also have 3 stage and unregulated. I think i remember conversation that the multiple stages are better because it gives a fuller charge. whats the various mAh ratings mean? charging speed? is slower better? Thanks! |
#4
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Battery Charger
I have been using the Deltran Battery Tender line of smart chargers for
years (club and personal) and have been very happy. http://www.batterytender.com/ - John |
#5
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Battery Charger
i wonder why no one uses those super thin solar cells attached to the wing
or tail surface and use batteries as a buffer and forget the overnight charger altogether. search "powerfilm" I dont know but probably someone out there has tried it? I'd be interested to find out. seems like it would be easy to build these in during construction and clearcoat over the top. a built in power system. run all the gadgets, computer screens, varios, gps, maybe even a transponder too. wrote in message oups.com... Hey there probably hasnt been a Battery thread for a few months so here goes! A quick search of the group didnt find what I was looking for. Im gonna be buying a a 12 Volt 8 Ah gel cell for the Cherokee to run the fancypants electronics I got for christmas. Need a charger. The place Im getting the battery from has a 12V 500 mAh and 12V 1 mAh charger for the battery. Both are dual stage. They also have 3 stage and unregulated. I think i remember conversation that the multiple stages are better because it gives a fuller charge. whats the various mAh ratings mean? charging speed? is slower better? Thanks! |
#6
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Battery Charger
You would really not want to mess with trying to keep the flow over these laminar or deal with other manufacturing issues with a critical airfoil surface. Sticking the on the fuselage can probably get you enough power for toys. Which is exactly what people do today. Look at www.strobl-solar.com. Available as well installed by all major glider manufactures. And many of the manufactures or their reps can sell after market install kits or they are available from Strobl direct. I'm in the process of having set installed on our club DG-1000. The PowerFilm are amorphous silicon, the Strobl are individual crystalline silicon cells laminated between plastic sheets. Crystalline silicon has a factor of several increase in efficiency over amorphous, which if you look at the numbers will explains why the Strobl panels are so much more efficient than the PowerFilm - even with "wasted" space between the individual cells. The plastic laminate is flexible enough to allow the sheets to curve to the glider surface. They are bonded (3M VHB tape) onto the glider surface or recessed into the surface during manufacture, which looks nice. Amorphous panels are great for ground use since they are really robust, can't shatter etc. Some can be rolled, up, etc. Unfortunately the best of these was the UniSolar Flex 30 W panels that are no longer in production. They were a nice strong heavy weight laminate and had eyelets to attach cords to secure to a glider, say draped over a wing. The PowerFilm ones are long and thin and the laminate is lighter and therefore are more of a pain to secure to a glider and blow around in the wind more than the UniSolar did. Still they are a good option for ground charging if you want to secure something to the glider. UniSolar still makes rigid panels that are amorphous silicon laminated to a thin painted steel sheet in a rigid aluminum frame. If you weight these down or have some where to mount them (not on the glider) they make a great ground charging panel. I have this panel (frame removed) stuck on the top of my Cobra trailer and works great for charging four 12 Ah batteries. Some information on glider batteries, chargers and solar panels he http://www.darrylramm.com/glider-batteries BTW on chargers, two main things to look for - 1. All the chargers you are likely to buy are dumb - including the "smart chargers" - they have no idea of the battery's capacity. Too high a relative charge rate can lead to evaopration of electrolyte from the valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) batteries we all use. The batteries pressure valves are usually designed to vent somewhere above a few PSI and will do so if the battery is charged at too high a current. There is very little electrolyte in these batteries, just moist fiberglass mats between the plates. Too low a charge rate and the batteries might not charge in time. A good charge current is something in the ballpark of battery capacity in Ah divided by 5 or 10. Look for the charger's peak current or "bulk charge" current spec. 2. Look for a charger that talks about being for something like... SLA, sealed lead acid, sealed, recombinant gas, VRLA, valve regulated lead acid, and the charger should mention having a "float" stage. What you care about here is the charger significantly backs off the charge current (i.e. "floats" the voltage) as the battery gets near being charged. The reason again is to avoid loss of electrolyte. Using large "trickle" chargers designed for flooded batteries (i.e. standard car style batteries) may cause batteries left on those chargers to lose their electrolyte by evaporation. Particualry older style "trickle" chargers, even those designed for smaller flooded batteries, are probalby not what you want for VRLA batteries as they will hold the voltage too high. VRLA batteries self discharge so slowly you do not need to leave them on a charger when not in use. So if you are not sure about the charger take them off the charge after they have charged. Electrolyte venting is also one of the reasons you want to keep the battery cool, especially during charge. I might disagree a little with Richard and encourage people to look for brand name chargers with features like good status indicators, self protection features etc, and to buy brand bame batteries, but to Richard's point none of this is hard to do and batteries are cheap, so if in doubt toss (recycle) them. And keep those transponders turned on... Darryl On Feb 4, 9:25 pm, "Dan D" wrote: i wonder why no one uses those super thin solar cells attached to the wing or tail surface and use batteries as a buffer and forget the overnight charger altogether. search "powerfilm" I dont know but probably someone out there has tried it? I'd be interested to find out. seems like it would be easy to build these in during construction and clearcoat over the top. a built in power system. run all the gadgets, computer screens, varios, gps, maybe even a transponder too. wrote in message oups.com... Hey there probably hasnt been a Battery thread for a few months so here goes! A quick search of the group didnt find what I was looking for. Im gonna be buying a a 12 Volt 8 Ah gel cell for the Cherokee to run the fancypants electronics I got for christmas. Need a charger. The place Im getting the battery from has a 12V 500 mAh and 12V 1 mAh charger for the battery. Both are dual stage. They also have 3 stage and unregulated. I think i remember conversation that the multiple stages are better because it gives a fuller charge. whats the various mAh ratings mean? charging speed? is slower better? Thanks! |
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