leaveing radios on a rackcharger for a week or more

[ssd]

Hi I got 4 mts2000 and a rack charger.can I leave my radios on it for say a week at a time or longer? Thanks

[Jim202]

Hi I got 4 mts2000 and a rack charger.can I leave my radios on it for say a week at a time or longer? Thanks

You will probably get as many answers as you get comments about this.

Bottom line is how well do you like your batteries and replacing them. If the rack charger is working to specs, the
boys that designed it will probably say that once the battery is fully charged and trips to the low rate you should
be OK. With that said, I have never been a strong supporter of just leaving a battery in the dual rate charger to
just hold a radio. If the power blips, the charger will reset and go to full charge till it trips back to low rate again.
The process will probably over charge the battery in doing this cycle.

Then we have the issue of just what kind of battery your using. With all the different composition in batteries today,
you can hardly keep up with which one you have and how should it be charged and on what type of charger.

Bottom line, if you don't want to chance stressing the battery life, take the radios out of the charger when they are
done charging.

Jim

[MT2000 man]

I ALWAYS take my radios out of the charger about a day or so after they are fully charged (and if I'm not using them obviously). Leaving them in the charger for extended periods of time will simply deteriorate the life of the battery much faster then just taking the battery off the charger once it's reached it's full charge.

[Wowbagger]

THE single biggest killer of batteries today is simply drying them out. Most of what people call "memory effect" isn't truly memory effect, but rather a simple lack of mobile ions in the battery to shuttle from electrode to electrode.

Leaving a battery on the charger can dry a battery out two ways:
1) The charger continues to drive a current through the battery. Since the battery is no longer converting electricity to chemistry, it starts converting electricity to heat.
2) Even if the charger completely cuts the power to the battery, the charger tends to be warmer than ambient. What does "warmer" do for evaporation?

Yes, theoretically batteries are "sealed" - except they aren't. They have vents to allow excess pressure out, and where does the water go?

This is the same reason you shouldn't leave batteries out in your car if possible - in the summer, you have a nice oven to bake those batteries a crisp, dry golden brown.

[Will]

In the JEDI rack chargers the charge NEVER turns off.. So remove the battery one to two hours after the charger switches to Complete.
During the Complete mode the charger is STILL charging the battery altho at the normal 1/10 C rate.

[ssd]

Ok everyone thanks for the info

[Spiffy50]

If you have an IMPRESS charger with IMPRESS batteries, in theory you can leave them on indefinitely with no ill effects to the batteries. I don't know that I'd want to trust my $100+ batteries to this theory however. For my "standby" fleet of Jedi/Waris/Saber batteries, I usually cycle them once a week. That is, I'll throw them on the charger until they turn green and leave them there for half an hour. After doing this for well over a year, one of my 2007 batteries easily lasts a full 12 hours with frequent TX, so I'd say it is relatively safe.

[W6WAW]

With a normal charger, you may well cook the batteries for the reasons previously discussed.

If you want to keep the batteries on a standby charge, you might pick up a second gang charger and modify it for a very low trickle charge rate. You might have to do this for each of the charger slots.

I know a now-retired engineer for LA County Fire who modified chargers for both his station and personal radios while he was still working. Over several years, he compared the life and performance of Nicad batteries that were maintained on these chargers with those that received the normal FD charging protocol. He found that the ones he used with the modified chargers maintained their capacity and lasted a lot longer than those normally charged. He used a battery analyzer to verify this. Unfortunately, I don't recall the charge rate he utilized and the mods for each model charger were unique to it.

There may be commercial chargers out there that will do this, but the stock Motorola non-Impress chargers generally won't.

If you want to automatically cycle a charger once a week, take a look at the highly programmable light timers that install into electrical boxes and are available at hardware and home improvement stores. It is easy to take one of these and an AC receptacle and put them in an outlet box with a power cord attached. Then you can set it up to come on on any chosen day for the number of hours needed to top off the batteries.

[Bill_G]

A timer on the outlet - I like that idea. Dead batteries after being in a charger for 10 months is the biggest problem with standby emergency packsets. You don't need them until you NEED!!! them, and then you don't have time to charge them. So, they leave them in the charger collecting dust dying the slow death.

[wavetar]

A timer on the outlet - I like that idea.

Yes, we've advocated that for years to many a 'low use' customer...simple & it works. Set it to come on once a week for a couple of hours (if rapid chargers are used) & you're good to go.

[Bill_G]

I get to do the perp walk of shame. It never occurred to me. It's such a simple freakin idea. And cheap. doh!

[ssd]

Ok I like ur way I will go get the timer it will work good for us.

[Jim202]

Ok I like ur way I will go get the timer it will work good for us.

The cost of a timer is way cheaper that one or two battery replacements. Sounds like a
win win all the way around. If you have the charger full, that's a bunch of coin for new batteries.

Jim

[MT2000 man]

I like the idea of a timer as well (why I never thought of that myself I'll never know ).

I'll probably make my way up to HomeChepo today and get one

[Will]

Ok I like ur way I will go get the timer it will work good for us.

The cost of a timer is way cheaper that one or two battery replacements. Sounds like a
win win all the way around. If you have the charger full, that's a bunch of coin for new batteries.

Jim

I find that no more than 20 minuets once a week works.

Remember that a rapid battery burner, OPS charger, on for a hour or so each week would overcharge the batteries.

[ssd]

At the site we work at we ues the 1 day a week so that y I ask and the timer will work cuz they can put the radios on the rack at night. And in the moring the timers can turn off the rack so they are redy to work next week