Lets talk about batteries for a while. Ever since I resurrected my hand held radios I have been interested in batteries. As I mentioned before, I use the BP-90 which is a battery pack that takes six AA cells. You can use alkaline batteries. The problem is that you can burn through batteries quickly and it gets expensive. BTW - in my search for inexpensive alkaline batteries I came across the Best Buy Essentials brand whish is less than half the cost of those copper top guys. Both these batteries have about the same rating of 2700 mAh. Because the alkalines won't stay in the holder very long before being replaced, the leak propensity really doesn't matter.

The other battery choice is Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) rechargeables. You can't find NiCads anywhere, and the NiMH are a much better technology. The best choice for me was the Panasonic "eneloop" which is supposed to have a rating of 2000mAh. That is the best you can do for this battery chemistry. So that is what I have been playing with. I looked real hard and found some outstanding technical information about the batteries and chargers. My ancient wall charger blew itself up yesterday, so I have ordered a brand new Panasonic charger, BQ-CC55, which was highly regarded.

One issue I have is determining the state of charge of the batteries. Lots of "data" out there, but the bottom line is that the NiMH cells keep a voltage of about 1.2 V per cell until the very end. Today's photo is of a freshly charged battery pack showing 7.97 V which is 1.33 V per cell. That is where the charging ends up. So I have some benchmarks. Charging with the ICOM charger requires checking the pack voltage to find the end. The new charger "is fairly fast and smart," according to a technical review which was well done and loaded with experimental data. My new charger will get here Wednesday, so I am waiting in great anticipation to have a go with it.