Battery Data: Eneloop vs. Eneloop Pro in an FT-817nd

BLUF: Running the Yaesu FT-817nd radio the way I run a radio,

8x AA Eneloop Pro batteries: 3 hours.

8x AA Eneloop batteries: 30 minutes.

Mind you, this is operating the way I operate: 2.5 watts on PSK-31 making call after call, and using 5 watts on FM to the local repeater.  It's pretty abusive of these little batteries, but it's how I operate and I wanted to see what they could do in the real world.

Conclusion: While the white "standard" Eneloops will work after a fashion, they're not worth the bother.  They were crumbling in less than 10 minutes, and barely made it to the half-hour mark.  The black Eneloop Pros are enough for an easy day hike, but really not much more.  As far as being a trail VHF radio the FT-60 is probably a better choice, just because it has a couple of really nice power saver features auto-enabled.

Still... making a contact to a guy out in Washington state with a handful of AA batteries is pretty damn cool.

Now on to our comic interlude:

No, no, Jason.  You want the black Eneloops for this job.  Of course, that's what the Sith use in their lightsabers, while the Jedi are stuck with the white "standard" Eneloops.  This goes a long way toward explaining Vader's remark "If you only knew the power of the Dark Side."