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Old October 26th 06, 02:27 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna
Tom Ring Tom Ring is offline
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 230
Default fuel cell battery buffer or cap?

ml wrote:

hi

was wondering if someone had some thoughts on this and might be able to
help me 'calculate' the value i need

I was thinking of getting a jado fuel cell, it puts out 100w (about
8amps ?) @12vdc

it's not totally regulated, at full output the volts dip a bit

wanted to power a 2m rig at low power 5w out it falls w/in the spec's
of the jado but i wanted a buffer

at first i thought of a battery using the full cell to charge the
battery during receive since tx is brief but how do i calculate
how big a battery i need?


i also wondering if perhaps a capacitor or a few of them might also
do the trick and if so how to size them

not sure the pro's /cons' of battery vs cap's


naturally if i used the caps' i'd prob get a dc to dc regulator

any help appreciated


I would use a small gel cell across the 12V output. I do have some
worries since it says "nominal" 12V output and no better information
than that seems to be available on the site.

Except the prices. You must be quite well off to consider purchasing
this, since the XRT is $7999 and does not include a refill station at
$599 or $1799, so once your canisters are empty you are done.

If you can afford this system, I would suggest you buy a nice top end
deep cycle battery, $300 for 80 AH is in the correct range.

Or you could just burn gasoline in a 2000W Honda which costs about
$1000, makes almost no noise, is quite light, and will generate less CO2
than the fuel cell system will when you get down to reality since the
fuel cell system is actually powered by the fairly inefficient
electrical grid. And it will cost a ton less as well as delivering 20
times the peak power with commonly available fuel.

tom
K0TAR