Your portable radio battery is the heart of your portable communications, so like your own heart take good care of it. When it finally served a life time, go give it a transplant that is replace it.
Here are some good tip to get the most out of your radio battery.
1. Only put it on the charger when it really needs it. When you drop it in leave it in there till the light is solid green. Most modern charger today are rapid charger and go from red to green.
2. If you get a yellow or flashing light, that indicated a bad battery but can also indicate a cold or hot battery so give it some time to reach room temperature.
3 For those of you first responders who leave their radio in their vehicle, bringing it in once a week for a full charge seem to work well. Also charging it after a long call or more often during very cold weather weather.
Taken the best care of today's radio battery don't expect to get more four years the max out of it.
The material used in the cells are more "green" today and don't last like us old timers remember.
Here at D&R we have our own brand of replacement batteries that are built to our specs and is a big saving over O&M batteries.
Next blog will go over different types of batteries such as NI-CAD LI-ION etc. Also touch on smart batteries. If you have an ideas you like me to discuss about radio communications let me know.
Just don't commit on my grammar or spelling, Pam the English major not me. I am the "Radio Guy"
Roger;