Bill Horne, W1AC wrote:

The question would be how to charge the batteries without relying on
cars, since working vehicles are a valuable asset in themselves and fuel
may also be in short supply: I suppose we could devise a "standard"
method to hook batteries to working vehicles so they could be carried
around while being charged, but that's about it.

I have been looking into the utility of "ground batteries" as either a
charging source or even a source in itself. This is a source that I
haven't considered despite knowing of it's existence for some time. When
the ground thaws I'm going to plant some electrodes in front of the
house and see what generates....



That leaves the charging problem. If we can make a "standard" set of
plans that allow a team to dismount an auto alternator and connect it to
any source of torque, we'd have a lot more flexibility: broken-down cars
are always in good supply.

Another alternator application might be a "low head" turbine. I once
saw a television show that included a person who powered his house from
the creek running alongside it. Envision a alternator/generator attached
to what looks like one of those roof vent turbines. Place it in the
creek, and it charges batteries.


Lawnmower engines interest me because there are only three or four major
manufacturers, which means a lot of common parts and so forth. Nobody's
looking to mow their lawn right after a hurricane, so it's not a
resource conflict.

Connecting an alternator to a lawnmower engine would be an excellent
method of generating power. It is also something that could be rigged in
an emergency fairly easily. Mount the engine on top of a box, couple the
alternator and driveshaft, wire in the regulator and battery, and there
ya go.


I don't want to get too far afield, so I'll leave it that: the idea is
to prepare response teams to improvise from local materials, but we need
something in between jumper-cables and windmills.

Bill, I don't know if you remember the program on Discovery channel
where teams of people were let loose in a junkyard with a task of
building some sort of contraption from materials they had to scrounge
within the yard.

Imagine the fun of setting groups of hams down with instructions that
they would have to put together a power source and power their radios
from non standard materials. First group on the air wins - or some other
criteria of course - Power, reliability, etc.

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -