Drill batteries

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toshiba1
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Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Tue Aug 16, 2022 5:15 pm

Anyone used these for low power in the field with some sort of regulator to smooth out, the voltage / current? If if they can last a good day drilling holes one might think it would make a good mobile power supply. What sort of power could you feasibly drive and for how long with one or a couple in parallel at 18v 4.0ah.

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sinus trouble
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by sinus trouble » Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:27 pm

You can calculate a rough run time with some simple mathematics!

You will first need to load test your rig to determine its consumption!

For example, If your rig consumes 1 Amp @ 18 Volts?

4.0Ah divided by 1 Amp equals 4 hours!

Ofcourse this is a rough estimation that does not take into account losses in your system!

I hope this helps :)
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by Albert H » Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:54 am

Bear in mind that the battery voltage will fall as the cells discharge, so you'll (probably) get less power out at the end of your broadcast than you did at the beginning. In many cases this won't matter too much - halving your transmitter power only reduces the signal strength by one "S" point - but if you're going the battery route, it's sometimes worth using a step-up (or down) constant voltage regulator.

The drill batteries tend to be quite expensive, and I'm not sure how they'd respond to lengthy discharge. Car batteries (for example) are awful for slow continual discharge, but "leisure" or "marine" batteries are designed for long, slow discharge and will give good results for many cycles.

Another battery that's worth considering is the "Gel Cell" type. A friend of mine had a relation that worked for an industrial burglar and fire alarm company. In that business, they had to replace the batteries after a matter of months if the installation was to remain suitably certified for insurance. We found that the batteries they were removing and discarding were perfectly good for transmitter up trees! You can sometimes get these secondhand batteries very cheaply on Ebay.

Years ago, I ran a transmitter up a hill with a "leisure" battery fed by solar panels and a little wind turbine to keep it charged up! I designed my own charging management system, based on the application notes in the International Rectifier FET designs handbook. I used power FETs as the control elements and in a switched-mode supply to give a constant 28V to the rig. The power supply and control ended up being more complicated than the rig and link receiver!
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:25 am

sinus trouble wrote: Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:27 pm You can calculate a rough run time with some simple mathematics!

You will first need to load test your rig to determine its consumption!

For example, If your rig consumes 1 Amp @ 18 Volts?

4.0Ah divided by 1 Amp equals 4 hours!

Ofcourse this is a rough estimation that does not take into account losses in your system!

I hope this helps :)
It does, I can see where i was going wrong now, I was trying to work out the loss of power over the amount of watts it put out.

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:34 am

Albert H wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 3:54 am Bear in mind that the battery voltage will fall as the cells discharge, so you'll (probably) get less power out at the end of your broadcast than you did at the beginning. In many cases this won't matter too much - halving your transmitter power only reduces the signal strength by one "S" point - but if you're going the battery route, it's sometimes worth using a step-up (or down) constant voltage regulator.

The drill batteries tend to be quite expensive, and I'm not sure how they'd respond to lengthy discharge. Car batteries (for example) are awful for slow continual discharge, but "leisure" or "marine" batteries are designed for long, slow discharge and will give good results for many cycles.

Another battery that's worth considering is the "Gel Cell" type. A friend of mine had a relation that worked for an industrial burglar and fire alarm company. In that business, they had to replace the batteries after a matter of months if the installation was to remain suitably certified for insurance. We found that the batteries they were removing and discarding were perfectly good for transmitter up trees! You can sometimes get these secondhand batteries very cheaply on Ebay.

Years ago, I ran a transmitter up a hill with a "leisure" battery fed by solar panels and a little wind turbine to keep it charged up! I designed my own charging management system, based on the application notes in the International Rectifier FET designs handbook. I used power FETs as the control elements and in a switched-mode supply to give a constant 28V to the rig. The power supply and control ended up being more complicated than the rig and link receiver!

I have a load of drill batteries, i bought some of the flueron on ebay and they really are value and take ages to discharge fully, not sure that's good or bad for the purpose i was talking about though. I did power an old rig years ago by, buying a new battery, bit of an expensive day and only got a couple of hours out of it before frequency started to drift, just vfo/vco? no pll. which is not good.

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by Shedbuilt » Wed Aug 17, 2022 7:08 pm

Bear in mind that 1A is likely to be required for (say, finger in the air), a 5W or 6W transmitter. So a 4Ah battery (in as new condition, without having lost any of its original capacity), will support that 5W or 6W transmitter, for about 4 hours. To put it into context, a fairly average car battery is likely to be around 70Ah. If you have a lot of the drill batteries though, you could potentially parallel them; to multiply the available Ah. Also bear in mind, that most Lithiun chemistry batteries, will be destroyed if you over-discharge them. The good news, is that they are fairly voltage stable, over quite a lot of their usable capacity. You’d definitely need a low voltage power down circuit though; if you want batteries to survive.

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by sinus trouble » Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:25 pm

To be honest?

This sort of thing could be a bit of fun setting up for a few hours or so?

To sustain any sort of transmission with a substantial power becomes nearly impossible!

Things can get complicated and expensive very quickly!

There is also an unexpected aspect to this setup which i found out! :lol:

If your setup happens to be discovered by the public? A metal box with batteries strapped to it can often be misunderstood to be something far more sinister! :lol:
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:49 am

sinus trouble wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:25 pm There is also an unexpected aspect to this setup which i found out! :lol:

If your setup happens to be discovered by the public? A metal box with batteries strapped to it can often be misunderstood to be something far more sinister! :lol:
This is true, especially when Mr nosey sees an LED display of one of those home brew power banks I have just seen on youtube. :whistle
I did watch the guy make a suitcase battery which could power a microwave for an hour or a tv gaming system for some considerable length of time. Bit excessive, I was just thinking a few watts really, up at great height, in a tree somewhere. although my brain can still master the skill of climbing one. Not sure my legs would catch up these days. And the fact it would have to be retrieved. In the summer could just go camping on a big hill and do a set up with the flowrpot, rig it up as part of a canopy of sorts?

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:58 am

Shedbuilt wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 7:08 pm Bear in mind that 1A is likely to be required for (say, finger in the air), a 5W or 6W transmitter. So a 4Ah battery (in as new condition, without having lost any of its original capacity), will support that 5W or 6W transmitter, for about 4 hours. To put it into context, a fairly average car battery is likely to be around 70Ah. If you have a lot of the drill batteries though, you could potentially parallel them; to multiply the available Ah. Also bear in mind, that most Lithiun chemistry batteries, will be destroyed if you over-discharge them. The good news, is that they are fairly voltage stable, over quite a lot of their usable capacity. You’d definitely need a low voltage power down circuit though; if you want batteries to survive.
Cheers, I did see there is some sort of regulator board that can be installed cheap and which also, you can view the status via bluetooth on a monitor, it also keeps the batteries all the same charge and discharges equally. Did not look too expensive.

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by sinus trouble » Fri Aug 19, 2022 12:13 am

Yeh its worth a try on a small scale, It can only improve your experience and knowledge surrounding battery tech! :)

Im guessing 'Drill batteries' will be Lithium? which will need a battery management system (BMS) as mentioned!

Extra regulators would be required if you want to keep the Voltage constant? However, These will contribute to the overall consumption of your rig!

As with life in general, You dont get anything for free! :lol:
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by Albert H » Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:15 am

toshiba1 wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:49 am In the summer could just go camping on a big hill and do a set up with the flowrpot, rig it up as part of a canopy of sorts?
I used to do almost exactly that at music festivals. I had a little portable set-up which could do 1, 2 or 5 Watts, and could be tuned anywhere in the band. I had an aerial with an adjustable length radiator, a stereo coder, a limiter, a couple of solar-charged battery packs and a couple of music players (usually the Walkman kind of thing.
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Sat Aug 20, 2022 3:49 pm

Albert H wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 4:15 am
toshiba1 wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 6:49 am In the summer could just go camping on a big hill and do a set up with the flowrpot, rig it up as part of a canopy of sorts?
I used to do almost exactly that at music festivals. I had a little portable set-up which could do 1, 2 or 5 Watts, and could be tuned anywhere in the band. I had an aerial with an adjustable length radiator, a stereo coder, a limiter, a couple of solar-charged battery packs and a couple of music players (usually the Walkman kind of thing.
Nice one Albert, sounds like a great day out.

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by Albert H » Sat Aug 20, 2022 9:14 pm

It used to be a lot of fun. I'd have a heap of pre-recorded programmes with me, and later on - when MP3 players became practical - I built a player based on a hard disk drive that would play for 80 hours. That set-up used to get installed up a tree, and just left going for the weekend!
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by toshiba1 » Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:34 pm

Albert H wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 9:14 pm It used to be a lot of fun. I'd have a heap of pre-recorded programmes with me, and later on - when MP3 players became practical - I built a player based on a hard disk drive that would play for 80 hours. That set-up used to get installed up a tree, and just left going for the weekend!
Some of the stuff you fellas come up with on here, leaves me speechless. All i ever had to deal with were, some turntables a couple of old tape machines and plug and play to be honest, all though we did have a Sony portable DAT player on cusp of just out. We never used a swr meter or anything like that, even when setting up a basic link set up, sounds foolish but we did not know better. Could climb roofs though so we were sort of halfway there. If i knew what I read about now back then... Started off with a rig from Manchester, it was a Pye & Westminster van type with the flip up face lid. It sounded lovely, pll and stereo, it was supposed to be 25 watts, but turned out to be about 4 watts. Moved up to Pye & Westminster base station, had the power but moved around the band like Yoko Ono. Then some better gear from some place in Angel Islington? Pretty sure that's where it was... Anyone remember a big old terraced house just packed with people waiting for the orders put in for gear on a Saturday morning? Then did an order with Veronica for the 50 watt NRG pll rig, with the half wave with what look liked a funnel on the coils And then throw in what looked like it could have been a drug deal and an evening in Kent somewhere to pick up a link set up looking dodgy in a chippy... Bloody great fun while it lasted though :)

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by Shedbuilt » Mon Aug 22, 2022 9:28 am

“Something more sinister” reminds me of an experience back in the 80s. A low power rig, set up on a tower block roof in 1980s Kilburn. It was powered from a car battery, floating on a battery charger. The caretaker had not been informed / bribed, and found the gear (I think after someone heard footsteps on the roof). He assumed something more sinister, and called the bomb squad. I guess that’s one which Eric probably didn’t get….

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by jvok » Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:39 am

Didn't one of the WNKR rigs get mistaken for a bomb back in the 90s too? Some shortwave station anyway, was tapping into a lamp post for power near a main road, someone spotted it and thought it was the IRA

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Re: Drill batteries

Post by Albert H » Tue Aug 23, 2022 3:39 am

RFL had an experience like that on the A2 near Dartford some years ago.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
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Re: Drill batteries

Post by jvok » Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:21 pm

That's probably what I'm thinking off then, not wnkr

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