On 4/26/2013 9:39 AM, Wayne Burdick wrote:
1. External battery I need something that will fit into the bottom of the Strobe Stuff bag. It should supply at least 11 V, and I'd prefer 4 to 5 AH, though I could get by with 3 AH and switch to the internal AAs later if necessary. Has any consensus formed about specific Li battery packs in this class? Ideal max size would be 1x3x2.5" (HWD).
I use a 4Ah LiFePO4 A123 pack for SOTA activations and other field events [QRPTTF tomorrow] with my K2. It weighs about 400gm, and is pretty close to your size spec above. Fully charged, it starts out at about 12.4V which drops to 11.7 in a very short time. The discharge curve is flat thereafter until just before depletion when it drops rapidly. Be sure and fuse the power leads, the thing will produce about 30-40C into a short. :-)
The SOTA rule requires that "the final access to the summit be non-motorized." They are deliberately vague to be inclusive for those with physical limitations [like me]. My current SOTA rig is the K2, a tiny Am Morse Equip paddle on the clipboard I log on, the above battery, and an AlexLoop. My KX1, 900mAh Li-poly model plane battery, and 28 foot wire made by pulling the center conductor out of a piece of RG-58 is the backup. It all fits in my back pack and I can either park and hike to the summit, or park there, hike down a bit and back up. Net weight of rig is probably about 3kg.
2. Logging I actually like paper logging in the field. It's kind of a Zen thing, checking dupe sheets manually (Griffin is old enough to help with this, too). But are there any good FD apps for the iPhone? I need the iPhone anyway so it doesn't count towards the station weight total. If there's an app that's easy to use for this, I'd love to try it. Heck, I'd even pay for it.
I have one on my Android called SOTA Logger but I don't think it does dupe checking. I've actually never used it, paper/pen works just fine.
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