Hi All,
For those looking for a cheap, light, power source for portable radio gear, the LIPO batteries are somewhat cheaper than the LiFePO ones but are at “inconvenient” fully charged voltages of 12.6v dropping to 11.5v (3 cells) and 16.5v dropping to 14.8v (4 cells).
I use a 5Ah hard-case 4S LIPO with my self built voltage regulator to provide a constant 13.6v. It works well but I have recently come across these nice little 4 Amp regulator units that will do the same job and so far I have not had any RF interference from them.
They usually cost a lot more than their current price in the “Bargain Bin” at Hobby King in Hong Kong.
Depending on where you are accessing the website from they cost US$2, £1.62 or €1,78 each.
I actually liked the look of the case intending to use it and throw the internal electronics away, so at that price, I bought three.
I have just tried one out - using it to regulate the voltage of a 4S LIPO battery (16.8v fully charged) down to 12.6v for use with radio gear - at up to 4A. The input can vary from 26v down to 10v and the output is supposed to stay at 12.6v.
Not only does the unit work, it looks like they haven’t pulled the RFI suppression components out of the design as I can find no difference to reception running my X108G portable rig off my normal well-regulated shack power supply or off my 5000 mAh LIPO 4S battery with this unit - it actually puts out 12.8v rather than the labelled 12.6v but that’s fine.
Watch out though - what does cost (around €20) is the shipping from Hong Kong to Europe, so these would be a good group buy to reduce the postage cost per unit. Postage costs to Australia or the US may be different.
As always with electronics out of China - YMMV.
73 Ed.