wrote in message
oups.com...
Need to charge some SLAs and other lead acid batteries for field day Im
trying to make
something work without buying a new battery charger, so here goes.
I need to charge a alot of different voltage lead acid batterys
6,8,10,12, ect. I have a
old charger that only puts out 12-14vdc, I have a 10amp 120vac
powerstat (variac) im thinking
of adding to the input of the transformer to reduce output . Will this
work?
Im not sure about the inductance & operating a transformer @ 1/2 or
2/3 the normal 120 vac
input voltage, im wandering if this will effect efficiency or if it
will work at all.

To get battery credit, didn't the batteries need to be charged by something
other than power line current? I thought they had to be solar, wind, water
etc charged so that you couldn't just plug in a battery charger into a wall
and charge them the easy way.
Not to put a damper on your using batteries for field day, but you might
want to check the rules. Here we use a big diesel generator for the radios,
but some wanted their logging laptops plugged into the wall instead of the
generator and a spirited argument broke out whether that negated the credit
for not using lines power.
thanks, John.
KC5DWD