Posted: 3/2/2012 12:31:59 PM EDT
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So my VX-7r goes with me most days in my "purse" as a communications source. I live right north of Cinci and we're experiencing some weather. I was driving back from picking my daughter up at school and monitoring the local skywarn freq, which was reporting tornadoes on the ground. When I jumped out of the jeep and went in the house the first thing I did was grab the radio and antenna out of the bag and turn it on. Nothing.
Inside the same bag I have the power cable that goes from the radio to an anderson power pole and both vehicles I drive have a way to power that. However, right now I had no way of monitoring in the house. Luckily my TH-D7 still has a charge and I plugged the 7r back in the jeep to charge. I just figured someone else needs to learn from my mistakes! 
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How's it going up there? Just reading on Facebook from Texas Storm Chasers posting tornado warnings throughout IN and KY. You guys can keep it up there for a while, I spent more nights than I care to remember last year listening to reports on the radio. Where I am is fine. South of here there seems to have been an F3 or F4 starting in IN and crossing through NKY back into Ohio. |
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Quoted: I live right north of Cinci and we're experiencing some weather.
I work in Reading and it has looked bad all day but so far hasn't been much. I am just amazed that power here in Reading has stayed up. Usually an intoxicated squirrel is enough to take down the grid for several hours. |
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Quoted:
So my VX-7r goes with me most days in my "purse" as a communications source. I live right north of Cinci and we're experiencing some weather. I was driving back from picking my daughter up at school and monitoring the local skywarn freq, which was reporting tornadoes on the ground. When I jumped out of the jeep and went in the house the first thing I did was grab the radio and antenna out of the bag and turn it on. Nothing. Inside the same bag I have the power cable that goes from the radio to an anderson power pole and both vehicles I drive have a way to power that. However, right now I had no way of monitoring in the house. Luckily my TH-D7 still has a charge and I plugged the 7r back in the jeep to charge. I just figured someone else needs to learn from my mistakes! Good advice . . if you have a small battery backup jump starter and a 12v pigtail for the HT (and maybe some alligator clips), it works great . . I'm alternating between one of these (didn't have enough power to jump our car anyway) and the oem battery so that one of the two are always charged. Eventually I'll order eneloop AAs and a battery case as another backup. Oh, I also today found an old laptop power supply while cleaning out junk that should work great for another alternative. |
| a AA battery pack with eneloops can save your ass. eneloops are low self discharge and only need to be charged once a year if you dont use them. i wouldnt store them in the battery case though. i would store them in a zip top bag along with the battery case and just install them when needed. |
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AA Battery case with lithium batteries makes a great back up.
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Several of my radios have a small parasitic current drain on the batteries, even when the radios are turned off - which is why I remove the batteries prior to storage. I know for a fact that my 7r has some form of parasitic drain. I have never left it for more than a few weeks and come back to it being able to turn on. Yes, I have the AA battery pack for it, and no, I don't have any batteries for it.  Lots of good ideas for curing that.
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Enable the auto power off function if your radio supports it, that way if it does get turned on in a pack or whatever it will only run so long. Auto power off saves the receive/standby drain, but it looks like it replaces the accidental drain with a parasitic drain . . on the FT-60 brochure shows it is 0.8mW if I remember correctly. |
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Or when worse comes to worse, lets see If my main Wouxsun dies there is the back-up battery for it, it the back-up dies there is the AA battery pack for it, if THAT fails them the battery replacement pack with the cigarette plug power cable, if THAT goes then the standard cigarette power cable is available. Now if all the above go then the V-82 is available, then the FT-270, then the FT-60 with AA battery packs for the 270 and the 60. And last but not least is the little 0.5w Alinco DJ-S11.
Of course these are just the HT's and doesn't count the ones my son has, he's a General class, as well as availablity of 2 dual band and 3 monoband mobiles, 4 HF rigs, two of those with 2m/440. Then there is the 800meg radios in my sons work truck and his room - he's a radio tech with a local wireless company. Everything has at least one form of battery back up including the HF rigs. If we can't communicate we would have bigger problems than access!! :-) Sarge |
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I keep a power cord (pigtail) with APP's stuck in the side of my VX-7 all the time. If nothing is plugged into it, there is no drain. (excepting the radio's own parasitic drain). I also have battery power via APPs in my truck and in my shacks. For backup use away from my truck and my shacks, I have a spare AA battery pack terminated in APPs. My pigtail is already in the radio, just plug it into something. ETA: I also have a spare OEM battery pack and a charger sitting on my desk. It gets swapped out if the radio won't power on using it's own power. |