Well, it happened to me, one day perfect battery then I put the radio away I come back and now completely dead after sitting in the box awaiting my next field trip.? Very frustrating to say the least.? Since "no user repairable items inside" never scared me and I am sure most of the folks on this board either... I took the battery out to ensure that it was not festering, like an iPhone battery to the point it crushes the motherboard.? In fact, the battery looked fine.? I know, looks are deceiving.? So, I tried to charge it... nope.? So, I have this dead battery on my desk and an xacto knife within reach, I said heck with it and cut the casing to find as I suspected 3, 3.7ish Lithium batteries in series with a cell balancer.? I unsoldered the balancer and immediately the batteries sighed a sigh of relief and came up.... So, I charged them with a "real battery charger" and low and behold after 4 charges and discharges I have full power.? So, the batteries are fine… the balancer is making us buy battery's we can’t find and don’t need.? I have included my exploded (pun intended) picture of the battery pack and a closeup of the balancer with the manufacturer’s kindly buffed off IC tops.? There is a way to wake up an upset battery balancer.? Can anyone look at the close up of this balancer and tell me where I might need to hit it with some voltage to reset it?? I'll let everyone know if it works and maybe save a few batteries from a land fill... or recycle box?.
Thanks
--
Tom
AE5NF
