Bill, if you are talking about the 12v booster packs, the ones that have a
pair of jumper cable ends plus at least one cig. lighter-type outlet, these
contain gel cell batteries, and work very well as emergency power supplies
for your 2m radio, particularly if you operate it at the low power setting.
Two years ago, when an ice storm trashed the city's utility lines in a small
city near me, a ham I know there operated his 2m/70cm radio from one of
these every evening for over a week. Every couple of days he would take the
pack with him to work and recharge it. Then it would be good for a couple
more evenings of operation. Go for it!

Mark


wrote in message
...
On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 11:09:13 -0500, "KC8WVG , Bill"
wrote:

I'm trying to locate an emergemcy source of power to operate my 2meter
base rig in the event of a power outage. My HTX-242 manual states the
current drain of the transmitter as 8A @ 45W and 4A @ 10W. Would a 17aH
jump start battery work? Or is there something better, yet not to costly?

Automotive starting batteries are designed to deliver one huge slug of
electrons over a short period of time. They don't do so well at
delivering
a low amount of power over a long time.

Me, I scrounge old SLA (Sealed Lead Acid)or gel-cel mat (forget the
acronym) computer UPS batteries, recharge them and test them under heavy
load. If the voltage drop is 5%, I keep them or pass them on to friends;
otherwise, take them to a battery dealer for the $1 (or more) core charge
I
get back.

I don't have an automated charging system, and instead use a trickle
charger from Wal-Mart said to have some degree of intelligence. It cost me
$18.

I charge up the batteries, test them under load and without, and log the
result. I also run each on rotation for the weekly ARES nets, so I can
report "operating on emergency power', which gets me off the net quickest
and also encourages other hams to be self-reliant.



--
John Bartley K7AAY http://celdata.cjb.net
This post quad-ROT-13 encrypted; reading it violates the DMCA.
Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct
tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT.