On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:24:18 GMT, "Dennis Gibbons"
wrote:

Does it have a way to limit voltage so it can be used with gels?

I was up in Orangeburg, SC, trying to get the trees from the awful ice
storm off his home all day today. I left my battery switch in my
stepvan shop off and ran a very heavy load (30-40A) for over 8 hours
on the 330AH golf cart batteries, my "house batteries" that run the
shop, lighting, AC inverter, etc. When I got home tonight, I put the
new charger on the house batteries with everything off to see how it
would react. I set it for a 40A charge rate, the maximum charge. It
ran about 39A for about 6 minutes, then beeped (indicates drop in
charge rate by the computer) and charged at 21A for another 10
minutes, then beeped again and settled at 9.4A for a long time. You
CANNOT overset the charge rate. The computer will simply not permit
it. I have a digital battery voltage meter that runs continuously on
the house batteries, one of those cheapies that plugs into a cigarette
lighter socket. At no time did the voltage reading exceed 14V. This
meter cannot respond to any pulse technology, however. I don't think
you could hurt any battery with it.

My old analog cellular phone runs off a 2.3AH gelcell pack. Instead
of hooking it to is boat 1.5A float charger last night, I hooked it to
the beast to see what the computer's reaction would be. I selected
40A, again, and the computer instantly took that out of my hands
before even getting my fingers off the buttons. It settled on a 1.3A
charge rate for my 2.3AH gelcell for about 10 minutes, then switched
the current down to .8A for an hour. The gelcell was quite deeply
discharged. After 2 hours, I noted it had dropped the charge rate to
..4A and beeped FUL about 3 hours after that....satisfied the little
gelcell was charged. It ran the phone all day, today, just fine.
Must have done a good job. The gelcell got barely warm last night.

Try hooking a 40A charger to a tiny gelcell.....OUCH!

Sure looked funny with the huge clamps on the tiny terminals....(c;


Larry W4CSC

Is it just me or did the US and UK just capture 1/3
of the world's sweetest oil supply? What idiot wants to
GIVE IT BACK?!!