Field box electrics

I am building a field box that will include a 7 ah gel battery, Triton Jr. charger, and a Hobico power panel. I will be using it for charging battery packs both at home and in the field. I use a car charger at home to charge the gel battery. This has male banana plugs and I would like to put female banana plugs in the field box for ease of connection when the gel battery needs to be charged, but I am concerned about possible damage to the power panel and Triton Jr. charger.

Is there any reason why I couldn't charge the gel battery with both the power panel and /Triton Jr. connected to it at the same time? Should I install a switch disconnecting the

  • lead to the power panel/Triton Jr. charger when I am charging the gel cell? Or, must I keep the power panel and Triton Jr. charger totally isolated while charging the gel cell? TIA.

Randy

Reply to
BCRandy
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I have the same setup as you and I charge the battery from the starter jacks. The starter is a direct feed from the battery, at least how I wired it, and the Hobico panel and charger are in parallel with the starter jack. I use a small 12vdc charger to recharge the gel cell when I get around to it, but whatever charger you use, just put male bananna plugs on it and let er rip.

Hope this helps.

Reply to
rich

If you don't mind me saying, it's not a good idea to use a Car battery charger to charge a 7AH gel cell

Reason is, the charge current from a car battery charger can be around 10 amps or more; most gel batteries ( 7AH) prefer less than 1 amp

just my opinion anyway

Trefor

I use a car charger at home to charge the gel

Reply to
Trefor

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would use this charger for the field box battery. You can plug it in and forget it. It will not overcharge, when it senses the battery is full, it will stop charging, but when it senses the battery dropping in voltage, it will start charging again. It's similar to what I use for my motorcycle's battery. Great for long term battery storage and safe for charging those small 7ah batteries.

Reply to
Vance Howard

Definitely not more than 2 amps, anyway.

Get a small float charger, about 20 bucks from wallmart. No problem charging while you are using the triton. Just don't hook the charger directly up to the triton. Not only will a float charger probably not start, but if you did get it started, the current from the charger is not filtered enough to assure that the triton will not be damaged.

The battery acts as a spike absorber to give good clean voltage to the triton.

If you can find a float charger with a maintenance free switch on the charger, that one is even better.

Whatever you do, don't let the gel cell sit around uncharged. It will be permanently uncharged, after it sits around for a while, like that.

Also, don't charge it from a car cigarette lighter outlet in your car, with the car running. Too much voltage and also too much current. You can ruin a gel cell in only a few charge cycles, like that. DAMHIKT!

If you must charge it from the car, do so with the engine not running.

Oh, and also don't forget to put a fuse in line somewhere, between the charging hookup and the battery. I use cigarette lighter outlets, 3 of them, to run the triton, and starter, and whatever else I want to run. I use the outlets to charge the gel cell, too.

Reply to
Morgans

The car charger I use is selectable for 2/6/8 amps and it has a float feature built in. I always use it set on 2 amps. BTW, it works great as a power source for my foam cutter set on 6 amps.

Reply to
BCRandy

You're right, Rich! The starter jacks of the power panel are wired to the same terminals as the wires used to connect the power panel to a source battery. I don't think using a

2 amp charger through the starter jacks with the panel's power switch off should be a problem. Am I missing something?

Hope this helps.

Reply to
BCRandy

I also charge my flight box batt thru the starter jacks. Never ran into any kind of problem. I use a "Battery Tender" to charge mine up. I believe a standard car batt charger might damage a gel cel. They put in some pretty decent amperage and the one I have is still charges at something like 2 amps at "trickle". Yeah, I know its not really trickle but y'all know what I mean.

Reply to
Fubar of The HillPeople

| I am building a field box that will include a 7 ah gel | battery, Triton Jr. charger, and a Hobico power panel. I | will be using it for charging battery packs both at home and | in the field.

Sounds fine, but 7 Ah isn't very much. Even if all you charge are TX and RX packs and small park fliers, it won't do too many cycles. And these batteries don't like being left discharged, so be sure to charge it after each day of flying -- it may not last for two days of flying.

As for the power panel, I never found them to be very useful. I like my glow starters and engine starters cable free, even if it means two extra batteries to keep charged, but it's nice not getting the cable caught in the prop too :)

Reply to
Doug McLaren

The only part of this I can respond to is the part about using aa car charger for the gel battery. Don't! It will charge too fast and the battery could overheat and possibly explaode as it nears full charge. Use a deep-cycle charger. NAPA used to have - and may still have - a car-type charger with an additional deep-cycle mode. I use that for a

31AH gel marine battery I have.
Reply to
mjc1

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