Safari Power

[LewdLuke]

Hello Everyone,

I am fairly new to this hobby. I became involved with the purchase of a Teknetics Delta 4000 in April 2010, and got my feet wet coin shooting. I found thousands of clad coins as I moved up the learning curve. One thing I learned was I needed a better instrument, so I bought a Safari about two months ago. It speaks a different language than the Delta and I'm climbing that curve again.

The Safari has proved to be a far superior machine. The one thing I like least about it is it's power consumption. Twelve to fourteen hours from five bucks worth of throw away AA's seems a little steep to me. I read the manuel and Andy Sabisch's book. ( Great book Andy, I carry it with me ) Andy's advice was to buy good rechargable AA's and a quick charger to avoid the high cost of Minelab's rechargable battery pack. I did that and it seems to be working well, but I have a question for you experts out there.

Eight throw aways produce 12 volts and my rechargables only produce 9.6. How will this effect the performance of my Safari?

Any input will be greatly appreciated,
Thanks

 

[Dan-Pa.]

It is important that you get NiMH recargeables with a MaH rating of at least 1600 to start with and rechargeables drop voltage quickly and stay at this voltage for the life of the charge and go dead almost immediately while I assume your using alkalines drop slowly thru their life and gradually go dead. I would assume if you if you have NiMH of a rating of 1600 MaH you would get the same results as from the Minelab rechageable pack.

 

[psyvad]

I've had good results buying the 100-pack of AA batteries at Lowes for only $19.95 (I think they're Utilitec).

The new Sanyo Eneloop 1500 batteries are supposed to be very good, and can be recharged 1500 times.

Eneloop 1500

 

[stasys]

best to use good rechargeble and good charger -can be maha, you can buy even 1.5V recharge. no point throw money and polut world. when 1,2 charged can be 11.8V+-. in detector are current regulator and until its drop till 9V or something similar its performs the same like 12v. .

 

[LewdLuke]

Thanks Stasys,

That answered my question, I didn't know about the voltage regulator.

 

[Clad2Hunt]

I picked up 8-2500mah NI-mh rechargables and Medium speed charger which charges from home or car with provided adapter and so far I have 16 hrs and sitting on 2 bars. I carry a backup set of Duracells but another set of NiMh is only 12 bucks. The invesment with shipping(use a promo codefor 10% off) 40.00. Tenergy brand from California.These are rated at 1.4 volts.