The Coast's general-purpose amateur radio club held another workshop this past Saturday, and the topic this time was batteries. There's an amazing plethora of batteries out there these days: the familiar lead-acid deep-cycle ones, the zippy new-ish lithium-ion 18650 cells that seem to come in everything these days, nickel metal hydrides that have taken over the AA and AAA rechargeable markets, and the rockstar LiFePO4's that make backpacking with significant power possible, just to name some of the more prominent denizens of the battery zoo. They all have their quirks and strengths, and it was good to have an overview. The accompanying handout from our host was 47(!) pages. Won't recount it all here, but much of the information came from Battery University.
By the way, the Mississippi Coast Amateur Radio Association has an impressive array of these sorts of activities. Workshops, yes, monthly meetings, yes – what club doesn't have meetings? – but we also offer FCC ham license testing, keep a repeater on the air (you can even listen over the internet, here), host a Tuesday night ARES and technical net on the repeater, sponsor several camp-outs over the cooler weather months (news of the latest one here), and manage to host a summer Field Day event as well. For such a laid-back group, we have a surprising number of things going on.
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