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Re: Battery Charging/HHB

Subject: Re: Battery Charging/HHB
From: Walter Knapp <>
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:30:35 -0400
From: "Neville Recording" <>

> 
> To Geoff Carey
> 
> If you will have access to a car battey. Buy an inverter. The socket in our 
> motorhome is called a power outlet on the dashboard and it boosts the voltage 
> to 120. This enables you to use rechargeable batteries in your equipment. I 
> was on the road for six weeks this spring and used a combination of 
> rechargeables and sets of eight AA for my Marantz PMD 650. 

I use both the inverter route and direct connect chargers. My experience 
is that the most effective way is the direct connect chargers. Think of 
it, with a inverter, you take 12 volts DC, convert it to AC, run it 
through a transformer to jump the voltage to 120 AC. Then for charging 
batteries, your charger uses a transformer to bring it back down around 
the 12 volt level, rectifies it to DC and charges batteries. That's a 
lot of steps, each with it's own energy loss. Instead use a charger that 
takes the DC directly and charges batteries with it. It's not only going 
to do it while using less energy from the vehicle and probably faster, 
but will be a smaller, lighter package. Only use a inverter for 
something like a laptop, where car chargers are often not available or 
extremely expensive.

I do use a inverter to charge the Portadisc a lot of the time, simply 
convenience as I don't have to remove the batteries. I've got the 
inverter primarily in case I take a laptop along. I also have lots of 
time, using the inverter takes most of the day to fully charge the 
Portadisc for the next night's recording. It would be tight for time if 
I tried to charge a extra caddy each day as well. The inverter also 
tends to get very hot and sometimes has to be shut down to cool in spite 
of having it's own cooling fan. This is especially a problem in hot 
weather. Anytime I'm in a rush for charging the Portadisc's batteries I 
do use the fast chargers plugged in directly. I do use those for 
headlamp batteries and so on.

The Portadisc can actually be plugged directly into a auto battery for 
charging. Best reading I got out of HHb on this was it's no problem if 
the car is off, if it's running they seemed to prefer you have a filter 
on the line to keep out the worst surges. I've not done this, but it 
should be fairly easy to do. I talked to HHb on this just after the 
Portadisc came out, I've been a little surprised they have not brought 
out a car cord for it.

The small Maha chargers I have all came with both a transformer and a 
cigarette lighter plug. For vehicle use you only need the plug and 
charger, not the transformer, making a smaller package. I could easily 
run four sets of AA's through each charger just during the day. And I 
have 4 of the chargers along if I need them. Rarely use more than two at 
a time as I stay organized to keep everything charged. I'm typically 
carrying about two dozen sets of 4 AA's for all the various uses, either 
in equipment or in a spare battery bag. Plus 8 of the 9 volt NIMH 
rechargables and a couple chargers for those. Plus some D cells for my 
larger maglights.

Walt






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