I heard you guys argueing about alkaline rechargability and thought I'd help
out. You mentioned:
> I was in a Radio Shack the other day and I overheard a salesperson
> selling someone a battery charger, and he was clearly claiming that
> it could recharge alkaline batteries. He even sold them ordinary
> RS alkalines, so we're not talking about the newfangled
> "rechargeable alkalines" which can be recharged something like 25
> times.
Hehehe, I (unfortunatly) happen to be a Radio Shack "Sales Associate",
and yes we do, or I should say did carry a "Buddy L" Alkaline recharger.
Believe it or not, it does work! Here's the catch, you get maybe 3 recharges
out of the average alkaline, and it must be recharged when they are weak
(1.2V I believe) or it won't work. The concept is simple:
All batteries can be charged, including lithium, carbon, alkaline, silver
oxide, etc.
If you ever looked at a nicad closely you will ALLWAYS find vent holes
(even if you don't know where to look, THEY ARE THERE)
These holes are to allow gases to escape durring charging.
Well, you guessed it, Alkalines have no vent holes, hense they will leak
if charged with conventional chargers.
The way those "Alkaline chargers" work is they closely monitor the battery's
drain(amperage) on the charger, as soon as it jumps up(to a point at which
large voplumns of gas are emitted) it lowers the charge current. It goes
up and down in a cycle bringing the battery right up to the bubble point
and then drops it to allow the small amounts of gas to be released for the
next cycle. Naturally, it is impossible to COMPLETELY seal a battery, so
by slowing down the rate the gas escapes you can fit it through a smaller
hole.
Quick note here, no other radio shack employee in the world probably knows that.I actually took one of these things home and monitored everything it did
through a cool meter I picked up at work that logs values to a computer.
Carefull what you believe from Radio Shack employees, we work commission and
some of us(not me) will say anything for a sale(that Buddy L Charger was $59)
By the way, it was discontinued.
One last note, the mall stores are the worst, they don't even get feed back
info from customers so thier knoledge base is small. Well, maybe it's not too
bad, I know a few good salesman(knoledgable) (sp?)
Well, Gotta run, it's too late. Got to work tomorow hehehehe.
------------------------------
Date: 8 Sep 94 22:36:19 GMT
From: news-mail-gateway@ucsd.edu
Subject: AMSAT/NASA Keplerian File Format
To: info-hams@ucsd.edu
Hi Ray. Thank you for the great service you provide! Just a word of
caution: Although your mail host allows you longer files, please
don't forget that the "fragile" hf AX.25 packet radio forwarding
stations usually ask one to keep the file size to not much over 5 KB
if possible. For more info you may wish to check with either John
N4QQ or Tom W3IWI or others about this concern. 73, Pat WD8LAQ.
