KX4O 1B-Battery VA Field Day 2015

The 20m AHVD and 40m small loop antennas during KX4O 1B VA field day.

Despite a weak battery and few contacts, our 1B-Battery effort verifies a 40m small-loop and packet-radio NTS messaging using quick deploy antennas.

Vehicular Power Bus – Hell on Earth?

Connecting a piece of gear to an automotive bus is a terrible thing to do… unless the gear manufacturer understands the perils that await including spikes, surges and dips. Fortunately, military specifications consolidate decades of observations to help us understand the vehicle power bus.

Fancy battery posts are not always better

Good ol' lead battery post terminal.
Many hams add power hungry radios to their vehicle power systems. A preferred way to obtain the power is directly from the battery terminals.

I have been adding various gadgets to my Ford Taurus to bring battery power into my passenger area so I can get rid of my cigarette lighter plug for my 2m/440 radio.

Adding a wire to my original battery posts was a problem so I used replacement posts from the car audio market. This turned out to be a mistake.

Read more

Battery Energy Density: Gel Cell

Working at an airplane company as an EE certainly puts energy density of electrical storage components at the top of the list of important things.

Of course the buzz word of the decade when talking about batteries is Lithium, Lithium, Lithium.

Read more