Rudy Marcelletti, K8SWD said:
If the trickle charge (only about 18 ma or so I understand) is not
useful, then why are my batteries topped off if I don't use the rig for
a while but leave it hooked to a large external battery which is
maintained by a Battery Tender Plus unit?
Most manufacturers have recommended for years to use a trickle charge
on the order of the battery capacity divided by 20. For the original
Yaesu pack that works out to 50 mA or 80 mA for the W4RT pack. At 18 mA,
you are fighting the internal self-discharge characteristics of the
battery, and it will take a very long time to charge the battery.
A standard wall-wart slow charger is generally speced at a C/10 rate.
I use the internal W4RT pack mainly for last resort operation after
depleting external battery packs, or mostly for on the couch SWLing.
After depleting, I either use a wall wart Radio Shack RC car charger
(for this type of pack) directly into the W4RT replacement battery cover
jack--or simply set the charge timer on the rig to what I guess to be
the appropriate charge time and leave the rig hooked to my external
battery and charge both with the Battery Tender Plus.
Timed chargers are a poor choice if you care about your battery
longevity at all. You can buy a good charger for the price of one
ruined pack. Nearly all portable electronics that use rechargeable
batteries include the automatic charging circuits now, and the ICs
are cheap. I still wonder why Yaesu didn't bother to include one in
this radio.
Mike W4LNA
