Jim Collins - 10 May 2007 03:40 PM
How do you get ready for hurricane season?
Share any tips and tricks you’ve learned for getting your family, home or business ready.
Grab and Go Kit inventory and battery top off
There are some playful reminders on when to do some things. The State of Florida has your Drivers License and your vehicle tags expire on your birthday. That is a great way to remember to renew them. The local volunteer fire department asks us to change the battery in our smoke detectors (and dust them) when the clocks change. I am lax when it comes to checking my grab and go kit and recharging the batteries in it.
I built a rechargeable 12v battery pack from 5 (7) amp hour gel cells. It weighs about 30 Lbs. and is in a semi-rigid canvas bag with strap handles. Since the idea was to have a ready to go battery bag, I need to remember to top it off monthly. The batteries are in parallel. I know that “eddy currents” within the pack can discharge it as the slightly different charge states/ voltages within the pack take it to the lowest common voltage. When I built it, I did not put blocking diodes on the negative leads, but I plan too.
To get back to the reminder event, I wanted a monthly event that would remind me when to charge up the big pack, the hand held radio batteries, the jumper box and mega-spotlight in the truck. I was going to pick a date, like the first or last day of the month but they did not seem significant enough. Then I decided I would do it on the night that my radio club meets. I set them up to charge when I get home from work, and charge them until I get back home from the club meeting. Not only am I reminded to charge up the batteries on meeting night, but I don’t forget to go to the club meeting!
Since I do a lot of radio support to non-profit events like marathons and bike races, I use one of 4 hand held radios. Keeping them in a grab and go kit makes it easy to find them and their accessories when I need them. But if there is not an event in a month, the hand held radios might not get charged. I now charge the radios along with the big battery pack on club night. That makes it a good time to inventory the bag contents to make sure all the radio accessories are still in there.
You can see some of the batteries I work with on http://www.freeradiobook.org in the “Solar Project 2009” book down load. My next step is determining what size and specific type of blocking diode to use on the big homemade battery pack.
