La Crosse- BC900 battery charger--Pretty slick little unit.

[backslyder]

Batteries, probably not the most exciting subject for most people and probably even a lot of detector owners, but you have to admit, we all need em' and I believe most of us are probably using rechargeables. That being said, when I bought my Quatro some years ago I went down to Fry's and picked up an "8 banger" pretty standard battery charger that would only do double A's either Ni Cad or NiMh (nickel metal hydride). and it seemed to do a pretty decent job. However,,,, me being the tech junkie that I am, I noticed that after quite a while when I would charge 8 batteries for my Minelab battery pack, they wouldn't hold a charge nearly as long as before. Well I knew from reading about it that after a given amount of time any rechargeable (that I know of at least) eventually gets to the point it won't hold a charge worth a darn, if at all. Well I kept thinking about this and started to wonder if only certain batteries of the 8 I was using were going bad before the other ones were. So I got on the Internet and started reading about batteries and boy does it get deep and technical pretty quick. To make a long story short, I realized I probably needed more information from my charger about the batteries I was charging and my old charger didn't tell me anything as far as amperage or volts. I think it said it would shut off automatically when they were done charging. To try and keep this long story short, I ended up buying the La Crosse BC-900 charger on Amazon. I was hesitant because of the price and the fact that it only charges 4 batteries at a time, but that's probably the only downfall I've found about this charger.

To begin with, I picked it up for about 45 bucks. Now the newer model, the BC-1000 is $48. (and change). It's not a "just plug it in stick the batteries in and that's it" kind of machine. I really had to read the owners manual, but so what. Someone told me one time that it's "ok" for real men to read owners manuals. (I'm only jivin' you here), but, I've been a manual reader since I was a kid. Once I studied the manual and figured out how to use it, the fun began for me. I noticed that you can set each battery at different charging amperage. You can also set it to charge anywhere between 200milli amps up to about 1800 in some cases "and" you can also charge AAA batteries at the same time your charging AA batteries which I use for my Quatro. There's four modes. Something like a "test" mode where you can kind of test the amperage holding power (I think) of each battery separately. There's a charge mode a discharge mod and a refresh mode. Did you notice that I said "see the amperage separately". That was the thing that made me "pull the trigger" on buying this unit. During and after the charging It will read out the amperage of each battery, the volts of each, how long it took to charge, and the milli amps your your using to charge each battery. What thrills me the most about all this is I noticed that after refreshing a set of battery's I could easily tell which ones held the best charge and which ones didn't because it spelled it out for each battery in milli amps or in some cases amp hours. For instance if I were charging "what was supposed to be" a 2600 milli-amp battery and it only charged up to 1200 milli amps, I figured it either needed to be refreshed or that after refreshing it still only charged up to 1200, it had obviously began to loose it's holding power.

When I get a little more bucks ahead, I'm gonna buy a second unit so I can charge all 8 batteries at the same time. One more thing. The higher you set the charging amps (which you can set manually) the quicker it will charge. I hope this didn't leave every one yawning and I know a lot of people aren't gonna need to get this sophisticated with a battery charger, but just remember what I was saying about being able to actually see what the end amperage is numerically for each individual battery, and I hope you can see that this can be a good thing, where you can pull the batteries that won't hold a charge as good and replace them with newer batteries or at least ones that hold a charge (amperage wise) close to the other batteries that your using in each set.

 

[jabbo]

Wow, that is some charger. I use NiMH, seven pack AA (one dummy). After each hunt I charge them all at once still in the battery holder using a telephone 12 VDC charger plugged into it for 3 hours. I leave the house with 9 volts and come home with 8 after 3-4 hours. Not as sophisticated as the BC-900 but it works.

 

[Critterhunter]

I'm big into RC electric planes, and in that hobby battery and charging technology is about 15 years ahead of the detecting circles it seems. In RC you've got to make it your job to know your chargers and batteries or it could cost you a plane. The prices of chargers, custom nimh or nicad packs (that can be built to order for a detector even), or individual cells to build your own, lipos, and other cell technology is dirt cheap if you know where to look too among sites who cater to the electric RC plane and car crowd. A popular charger is the Accucel 6 for $20, that will do things chargers costing over $100 won't. Computer display, settings and savings for each battery type, reports capacity of the pack, adjustable amp rates, everything you can think of. It'll do lipos, nimhs, nicads, life, and a few other newer battery technologies. To charge 8AAs or any variation of 9Vs, AAAs, or any variation in number of cells (from 1 to I think 12 or 16 maybe...can't remember) at a time, etc, just get a series battery holder at radio shack or something and hook it up to it. It'll discharge/condition cells too. Has an internal fan to keep it cool, and so on.

Only problem is it runs off 12VDC, so either pick up a cheap invertor to plug into your wall or hitch it up to a car battery or something. I converted a PC power supply from a garbage picked computer to a DC source for in home charging, but when flying planes in the field we just charge right off the battery of the car or truck we drove to the field. You can also pick up a cigarette lighter plug (any that just passes 12V straight from the car) and hook it up to that for charging while driving to your site.

I run a 3 cell lipo in my GT for lighter weight and longer run times. So small it easily fits inside the 8AA battery hold and plugs into a small plug I wired in there. These cells are cheap ($7 for the one I bought) if you know where to look, and have other advantages over nimhs or nicads like 1 hour charge times without pushing them and they don't self-discharge on the shelf like a nimh or nicad will. Although there are now low self discharge nimhs out there so they are ready weeks or months later without needing a top off charge.

I'd warn anybody though, don't mess with aftermarket chargers unless you know a few things about amp rates and such. You can push a pack too fast (usually over 1C, or an amp rate equal to the capacity of the pack) and they might get hot and shorten life spans or worse things could even happen. And as for lipos, don't play with them either unless you read up and know what you are doing.

In the modifications forum I posted a thread (should still be on page 1) about some myths and other info about rechargeables, and you can also to to the battery sticky in the Sovereign forum and find countless links to Findmall threads on charging, batteries, etc. This info applies to all detectors and is everything you probably did NOT want to know about batteries and chargers. We even get specific on charging Etrac and other packs, as well as the Sovereign and Excal. Some threads are direct and to the point, while a few are monsters that will require a lot of reading but you'll know all you need to know about this stuff. Just be sure to confirm things for yourself on the web. Opinions in battery charging are varied, so I don't claim to know it all. Much debate on the web as to many things, but we cover stuff like how to recover a bad pack via excerise and higher charging C rates and such.

 

[backslyder]

Thanks for responding. You know when the rubber "hit's the road", it still comes down to whatever works, and I'd throw in--whatever works for each individual. In spite of this fancy charger, it has one flaw that I forgot to mention. If your battery gets two low in other words, just drained completely or goes bad completely, you'll get a null sign on the La Crosse charger, and what I ended up having to do was pull the battery out of the "fancy" La Crosse charger and put it back in my regular older charger for 5 oe 10 minutes in order to give it enough of a charge where my La Crosse could read it and take over the charging process. I still love the La Crosse, but I'm bummed that I've had to put some of my batteries in the old charger first. It's pretty rare to have to do that, but I still think La Crosse should make it where the batteries could be completely drained and still start charging them. Glad your system works, and again, I would need two La Crosse chargers to charge 8 batteries at the same time. Marc Trainor.

 

[backslyder]

A very informateive reply, Critterhunter. I was in one of our parks here in San Diego the other day, and for the first time, saw one of those electric planes. When I was a kid, 2 or 3 hundred years ago, it seemed like remote control was still pretty new, (although I could be wrong on that), but at least all the planes on a string method or remote control were all gas planes. I love the idea of electric. I may try and get into it down the road when I can get a little more "bucks ahead". Thanks again for the great response. Sincerely, Marc Trainor.

 

[Critterhunter]

First, yea...many chargers won't recognize a dead pack. Many decent aftermarket ones will though like the Accucel 6. I've brought dead cordless drill packs back to life for friends that sat dead for years and their drill chargers wouldn't recognize. You've got to force feed them a bit to start to recover them. A good charger will do that without even needing you to set some special feature or something. It just ignores the 0V and starts charging.