Stuart Longland VK4MSL wrote:

My only gripe is that Yaesu for some reason decided that it would use
NiMH cells in its battery packs... Li-ion would have been lighter and
higher density. Heaven forbid, gel-cell batteries would do better
than NiMH! But that's the choice they went with, and we all have to
live with it.

It's because lithium cells are a disaster waiting to happen. If you charge
them improperly they will catch fire. If you discharge them to "empty" they
are permanently dead.

They also die after around 300 charge cycles. ANY power put in is a charge
cycle, so laptops made in the last couple of years will no longer "float"
a lithium battery. They let it discharge to at least 95% left before
recharging it.

The latest NiMH batteries will go through 1000 cycles. Compared to litium
batteries they are bulletproof. They are also a lot cheaper.

The main reason they are so common is that people don't understand their
problems and like them because they are so light in comparison to
NiMH cells. The lightness disapears when you find out a 450mAH battery will
be trash if you use it anywhere near that amount.

BTW, they are dangerous corosive trash, much worse than NiMH cells.

Companies like them because they can claim the device has a long battery
life, low weight and in 6 months to a year be back buying a new battery.
Since the battery is proprietary at best and permanently installed at worst
it's a win win for them either way.

The bigest problem I have with NiMH batteries is that they no longer sell
large size batteries to the general public. Yes you can get real C or D cells
from battery specialists (which are rare here), but generally all you can get
is AA batteries or C or D cells which are just sleeved AA cells (with the
corresponding capacity).

I would not mind if I could get the sleeves, but no one carries them here. :-(

After all, in my 290RII which takes a lot of C cells, sleeved AA batteries
with 2700mAh capacity would far out last the NiCad ones I had in it.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or
understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation.
i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.