Power mobile HT chargers

[TomSlick]

My fire company has Impres chargers in our trucks that are running off 110 volts from the shorelines. This means the radios are not being charged when rolling. In your experience, is this considered normal practice? For the most part, I'm OK with it. Our trucks spend the large majority of the time sitting in the station. I was just wondering what "best practice" was. I would have thought powering them from 12 volts all the time would be preferable, with the shoreline keeping it powered when the engine is not running.

[RFguy]

Pretty normal here to have bank chargers that operate off shoreline only. In the odd event of a very long scene, they can power the shore line connector on one truck with their generator and charge spare batteries that way.

Very few responses last more than 4 or 5 hours, so as long as they have good batteries (IMPRES has made all the difference in this area) they don't seem to have an issue.

[TomSlick]

OK, thanks. That makes sense.

[KB2ZTX]

Same thing here. Our officers seats have 12V impress chargers, but the back RACK is 110. the only issue we have found is depending on the condition we may end up with a dead battery. Has not happened yet although the vendor told us this is an issue. Our FD goes thru all the trucks weekly at drill so I think watching it is good.

[TomSlick]

That's one of my concerns. When the guys put the radios back in the chargers after using them on a run, they can't easily tell if they are seated properly since there is no power/no LED indication. And of course, by the time the shore line is plugged in when they arrive at the station, the crew has already dismounted and forgets to check.

Checking them is part of the list for the weekly drill night, but they still sometimes get missed and even if that weren't the case, it could be several days before the situation is caught and corrected.

(Then again, even if the chargers were powered full-time, there will still be the guy who simply doesn't check.)

[lafd55]

I agree, pretty standard practice of only running chargers, for anything, only on shore power. Our department have had a lot of problems with members putting them back in wrong and strapping them in(NFPA thing) incorrectly and mixing up the straps, luckfully the station keepers check every day.