Wednesday 3 July 2019

New LifePO4 battery for portable use

For portable WWFF/SOTA I have been powering my FT-857D with a Zippy Flightmax 4200 mAh LifePO4 battery which works well. I also had a Zippy Flightmax 8400 mAh battery, but this had died, refusing to hold a charge for long and getting 'fat', swelling up, a sure sign of cell failure. So looked for a replacement and got a Drypower 7.5 Ah LifePO4 battery from Battery World.


It weighs about 1 Kg, so fairly similar to my Zippy 8400 mAh battery. It comes with spade lugs, so soldered on the leads from the old 8400 mAh battery with Anderson Powerpoles and covered them up with electrical tape. For charging used my Turnigy Accucell charger, using Life charge set to 14.4 v and 5 A, about what my charger can deliver. Note it does not have sensor wires, so I'm assuming cell balancing is handled internally, along with overcharging protection, as my charger dropped down the amps approaching capacity. Interesting to see how it performs in the field.

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