Has anyone come up with an inexpensive shop power supply (something besides the $110 Radio Shack 25A PS) for use with our chargers like the Thunder Power 610C? Since I will be charging in the shop it doesn't need to be complete in 10min, so will a simple 12V PB battery charger do charging at a lower amp rating?

Best,    Dennis

Hi Dennis,

It sounds like Alan has had good luck with his Pro Peak. Sadly, I did not. I bought one and it kept tripping my EFI and I could not get it to work. But, at $64 it is a bargin price.

The Radio shack power supplies must have gone up. Mine was only <$80 a year ago? It works great and is small and light weight.

After seeing my LV friends 12V power supply, I just had to have one! It is by far the best. I mentioned it here on another Post a few weeks ago. It is light, small, and it has THREE sets of female banana plugs so you can use three chargers at once. This last feature is nice because extra chargers give you more "Bang for the Buck" than an equivalent dollar value of extra batteries. I always use two chargers at the same time, sometimes three. This makes recharging at the field a breeze, and also at home in the shop. At $75 it is a very fair price for what you get. And the dual fans, and internal blue lighting adds a little "Cool" factor to the unit! ;-) ..... Here is the link:

http://sincityjets.com/store-accessories.htm

They also have the countdown talking timer I use. It is very useful for ECL, and I love the "Nicole Kidman" voice!!! :-)

PS: A cost effective alternative is to use a car battery at home and just recharge it as needed with your auto battery charger. But like Alan said, "don't" use the auto charger to directly power your LiPo chargers.

I have seen clubs, at two of our LV ERC contests, that plug an auto charger into our 110V outlet at the field, hook this up to a 12V auto battery on the ground, then run cables from the auto battery up to a charging rack on a table. This rack consists of a board that has two thin metal bars approx. 2' long on it, about 5" apart. Then everyone just sets their charger on the table and uses alligator clips to hook onto the pos and neg bars. I saw about 10 chargers at once working.  It looked strange, but seemed to work well. The auto battery was constantly being charged at a high rate so it kept working! I guess this 12V battery acted like a regulator for the "unclean" 12V auto charger? ..... This 12V auto battery does have the advantage that you can use it alone at the field to charge your batteries while you are flying. But they are heavy! ..... I think this is what Mike "Iron Man" Palko uses?

You may also wish to make your own.


http://www.clstunt.com/htdocs/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=203402&mesg_id=203402&listing_type=search


Kim.

Dennis,
See, once you have it, the $$$ memories will soon fade.

Picture of TP 610C and RS 13.8V, 15A power supply and hook-up wire sets.

Best,       Dennis

I ran into a small problem with my TP 610C last week at the field. If you use a shop power supply then switch to a 12V battery for field charge you need to change the TP 610C voltage level from 12V for the power supply to 11V for the battery. If you leave the voltage at 12V and try to charge from the battery the charger will shut off on low voltage.

This is what happen to me last week at the field. At first thought the battery was low (I have a lead acid motorcycle battery I use for CI starter that should give 2 - 3 or so charges). Check the battery it was at full charge. I had previously tested charging from this battery at home and all went well because I followed the instructions and changed the voltage to 11. So check you charger instructions to see if your charger requires this change to charge from these sources.

I don't know what happens if you set the voltage for 11 and use the power supply.

Best,    Dennis

Used the TP 610C on the home power supply and left the voltage set for 11V (same as recommended for charging from a DC12V battery), charger worked fine only difference I noticed was that the full charge on the A123 3s2p pack which when I set the PS to 12V would charge to 10.95V  now charged to 10.89V. This is still full charge since the full charge rating is 3.4V per cell total for this pack is 10.2V. I assume the difference is because of the lower voltage setting but that the pack is still fully charged since the voltage drops to the full charge level very quick. Have I got it right?

Best,         Dennis