I’m very happy with the 2Ah and 4Ah LifePO4 from Eremit. Good form factor, easy and safe charging and discharging.
With a Lab599 (low RX current of about 100mA and 10W TX), the 2Ah is good for at least 3h SSB and the 4Ah lasts for a whole day.
The 817/818 is happy with a 3S Li-Ion, but if you want/need 13V for a longer time, a 4S LiFePo4 is the way to go and the Eremit ones seem to be of good quality (using them now for nearly one year).
Since I live just across the German border, I have it easy and can collect the items from a German delivery address. Otherwise, there is/was an Austrian distributor for international delivery.
I have two of these batteries from Eremit - one is the one you have a link to, the 4Ah one, and I also have a 6Ah one from the same company. Both of them can be charged as a lead-acid battery type: I use a maximum charge current of 3.5A at 14V for each of them. The integrated BMS takes care of everything else, balancing, full charge, the lot. I also bought from them (I know, I could have made one) a small cable harness to connect both the 4Ah and the 6Ah in parallel to achieve a 10Ah(?) power source. I’ve used each of these now, one or the other or together, with a Xiegu G90 on half a dozen activations, and am very pleased with them.
The integrated BMS board/circuit does that by continually monitoring the charging process, and disconnects the battery electronically when fully charged. That’ll lead to a loud beeping from my Turnigy charger!
It’s basically idiot-proof, which in my case is a big selling point!
I managed to discharge my HobbyKing battery to the point where the Turnigy charger said no.
Following some chats in my other thread, so I set the charger to NiMh and gave the batteries some charge, the batteries came up to 10v and then set the charger to LiFe and batteries took a charge
Another point in favour of Eremit (a one-man company) is that you can order your battery with your choice (from a range of eleven different types) of connectors attached - or no connectors.
Hi Richard,
if using a Turnigy (or I expect any similar type LiPo/LifePO4) charger, set to pB (lead battery) you are shown the charging current and battery voltage. Once the charging current drops to nearly zero, the charger cuts off. You don’t get a “this will take another xx minutes and yy seconds” kind of indication however.
That I couldn’t say, not being a battery professional. As I write, I’ve just this minute finished re-charging my 6Ah battery, it having received an extra charge of 1075mAh at 14-17V, and it then informed the Turnigy charger that charging was complete.
You see, I AM a battery idiot - “I know how to drive the car, but have no idea how it works”, and I don’t really care as long as it goes. Well, we can’t all be geniuses…
Hi John, I saw that thread and kept an eye on it as I’d done similar at about the same time. Monitoring the FT-818 all day whilst working apparently isn’t good for the battery. It’s definitely lost some capacity, as it always drops to about 13.3v after charging. My other one stays close to 14v, even days after charging.
It works OK for now, but if I see an opportunity to buy another one (or two), I will, because they are a good balance of capacity vs weight.
It was nice to meet with people I’ve met before after a long break. Much better was being able to meet people I have met on the air or online for the first time. I think making new acquaintances in person is one of the things that I have missed a lot because of Covid.
If your pockets are deep enough you could consider buying one of these Tracer 4 A LiFe batteries - they come with charger:
Also available in the UK…
Mine is on charge as I type this… From starting fully charged this morning and in use all day in CW/SSB around 50/50. The battery completed 73.5 QSOs before it wouldn’t power my KX3 at 10 watts anymore. I thinks that’s pretty good for a battery that I bought two years ago secondhand with my (also) secondhand KX3. I hooked up a 3 Amp spare LiFoPo I carry as backup to finish off the day on 76 QSOs, the three stations on the spare battery were John @GI4OSF (1.5 QSOs!) (very patient op - while I changed the battery, still listening when I came back up), @DJ2MX (SOTA Complete for Mario) and regular Jukka @OH3GZ.
The cost is because anything Lithium has to go special packing / courier as a dangerous item. EU only is due to VAT changes. So what UK chaps need to do is to make a bulk order to a friend in the Republic and then meet up for a mass activation and beer session and collect their new batteries. Get enough involved and you can spread the costs.
Phil did say you needed deep pockets. I knew of the Tracer batteries and their cost which is why I mentioned Eremit for those with deep pockets but short arms ! It’s also why I’ve been writing about recovering 18650 cells from laptop packs. Though most laptops are now thin enough to use as a razor so they use more custom shaped cells, 18650’s may become less common.