Wall-Mart sells a pretty good charger for this purpose. It is rated at 2, 4,
or 6 amps (set by push buttons) and falls back to a float charge (13.5 V) after
bringing the battery up to about 14.8 Volts. I have one on the backup battery
for a Mastr II repeater that has a backup circuit built into the power supply,
but does not have a charger in the power supply.
We read the Zetron for a report to the village quarterly (they supply the
repeater site) and the procedure is to put the charger in the 6 amp position
(stir the electrolyte) every time we open the cabinet doors. It also gives an
indication that a power outage has occurred, since the charger will be showing
a 2 amp charge (default value) instead of the 6 amp setting it was left in.
If the battery has completely run down, a 2 Amp charger usually will not
completely charge the battery. The 6 Amp rate however, will bring the battery
up to full charge before falling back to the float voltage. The charger is
built by Slumberger (SP) and should keep his car battery in good shape.
73 - Jim W5ZIT
--- On Fri, 5/22/09, Mike Morris WA6ILQ <wa6...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Mike Morris WA6ILQ <wa6...@gmail.com>
Subject: [Repeater-Builder] OT - recommendation needed - battery charger
To: Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, May 22, 2009, 3:31 PM
Got a friend who is laid up with back problems.
His car has been sitting for several months between uses.
He has already lost one battery from sitting idle.
He wants to purchase something packaged like a trickle charger
that can be connected to the battery and left there (maybe even
semi-permanently with a cord hanging out the grille).
Does anyone have a suggestion for such a product ?
Maybe one of the "desulfator" devices ?
Mike WA6ILQ
