How long do you charge a nimh Excal battery for?

[Beachnut]

The instructions say on page 14 to charge the battery pod for 16 to 17 hours the first time, but it does not say how long to leave it plugged in for a "normal" charge. Any one know how long to charge for a "normal" charge period? Or can you just leave it plugged in till the next use, (which is near daily)? Thank you for any help.

Beachnut

 

[vfr800]

Beachnut

I hunt often, when i come home after cleaning my Excal i put it on charge overnight. If i don't hunt for awhile i have left it on for 2-3 days but then i will take it off the charger til i hunt again. It has never seemed to get hot and i always take my charger out of the outlet............

 

[Bling]

n/t

 

[Jed in NC]

I bought a charger from the website that sells the replacement battery packs and it has an LED that lets you know when the pack is charged, and then trickle charges after that.

 

[Sandpiper]

one I always wondered about also. I think I have came to the conclusion after running my machine from 5-8 hrs is place it on charge for around 9 - 10 hours this seems to test the proper voltage after removing from the factory charger. Have also thought of putting a timer on the charger in case I forgot to unplug it, but so far have not.

 

[Critterhunter]

Unlike Nicads, Nimhs should not be trickle charged. Many Nicad chargers will drop down to a very low trickle current to maintain the pack while not in use. Everything I've ever read indicates that is unhealthy for nimhs to be kept on a trickle charger once they've reached full charge. I've never seen anything stating otherwise, so I believe it's true.

If you're charger does not terminate when the pack is fully charged you can roughly estimate how many hours it will take to charge a nearly dead pack. The charger should list how many milli amps it is putting out. Divide this number into the capacity of the pack. For example, if it's a 1000ma pack and the charger puts out .100 amps (100 milliamps) it should take about ten hours to fully charge the pack. Since the Excalibur probably draws about the same amps as the Sovereign at around 50 milliamps, you can also estimate how dead the pack is based on how many hours you've hunted with it, then use that number to estimate how many hours you need to charge it to bring it back up to a full charge.

There is a computerized charger called the Accucel 6 from Hobby City for around $35 that has features of chargers costing $120 or more. It will charge many battery types and allows you to control every aspect, including peak threshold, timed shutoffs, or just about any other control feature you can think of. Many of us who are into electric RC planes use this charger to charge everything from our transmitters to our plane's flight packs. If you choose the cheapest shipping from them you'll still get it in under a week from overseas. It comes with various connectors but you can easily make one for whatever you need. The only problem is this charger must be ran off of 12VDC as many of us in RC run our chargers off our car's battery under the hood while in the field. You have several options here. Run it off a car or tractor battery, run it off a 12VDC power converter that will plug into your wall, or you can hack a computer power supply to provide a clean 12VDC power source. That's what I did for charging at home. Ripped one out of a dead computer and within about thirty minutes I had it modded to power my chargers at home. Hobby City does sell 12VDC power supplies, and no I don't have any financial interest in that company. They just have great prices.