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Quote:
Originally Posted by dsafety
It has been my experience that you can go with high quality gear which lasts a good while or cheap stuff which lasts about half as long.
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I hear that.
When I rigged up my X-13 back in early 2009 I bought a NIMH 10ah battery set up with an automatic float charger that keeps it fully charged all the time. When I'm not using it I just leave plugged in and it's charger maintains it.
As you can see it's smaller and lighter weight then a 7AH 12v sealed lead acid battery.
The manufacturer said it would be good for thousands of charges if properly maintained and though I haven't used it that much it's still going strong just like new as far as I can tell. I can run my electronics all day on it and what I really like about it is unlike a lead acid it supplies a constant voltage until it's done. Great for running a spot while hooping. If the thing shorts out tomorrow I'll buy another one.
If your going to run a lead acid you have to get a good charger that can monitor and maintain them. For my 6v bait setup I run a 10ah lead acid and maintain it with a Schumacher Battery companion. It's a automatic battery charger that can maintain 12 and 6 volt batteries keeping them at full charge using float-mode monitoring. It's perfect for charging small batteries. Great for maintaining small and large batteries kept in storage. I like that charger so much I bought two, and use them for almost everything.
I found these through motorcycle consumer news. Motorcycle battery chargers have to maintain batteries over the winter in colder climates where people can't ride, so these guys know their chargers. They rated maybe twenty brands and models and this one got the best marks.
I bought both of mine off ebay for under $20 a piece. I highly recommend them. I'm going on two years with my current 6v 10ah SLA.
Jim