cobalt pet shortwave / mediumwave weblog

15 August 2006

eton e5 rechargeable battery life

I use Energizer nickel metal hydride (NiMH) 2500 mAh batteries in my Eton E5. The radio would not stay on tonight, so I decided to check my records and determine how long they actually lasted.

According to part 1 of my July 2006 reception reports, I had just put fully charged batteries in my E5. Tonight, I switched on the radio and it powered off after a few seconds due to depleted batteries.

My reception report notebook tells me when the E5 was first used in July (which would be when the new batteries went in). I can also determine how many hours of use the E5 had.

The recharged batteries went in on 03 July 2006. They were depleted on 15 August 2006, which is 44 days later. According to my notebook, I can account for 3 hours and 22 minutes of usage with that set of batteries.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like another terrorist plot.

Dean W. Armstrong said...

Don't forget that NiMH have a self-discharge rate of anywhere from 0.5% (says http://sackheads.org/~mayfield/battery/analysis.html) to 5% a day (crazy sites).

weatherall said...

Thanks for the URL, Dean. Once again I forgot to measure the voltage of the depleted batteries. I will try to keep more detailed battery logs for both the E5 and my Sony ICF SW7600GR.

Firestarter5 said...

Do you charge the batteries in a seperate charger or within the E5 itself?

weatherall said...

Lately I have been charging all of my NiMH batteries in a charger that I bought a few years ago for my digital camera. I am doing this so that I can roughly compare the battery longevity between my E5 and my SW7600GR, and I want to factor out any battery charging differences that the E5 might have with my external charger.