Mike,

After I initially charged the battery, I used the radio on a number of
ocassions to listen to ATC from my house. While I didn't keep track of the
time, I am sure that I listened well over a couple of hours total elapse
time without any problem. I keep the squelch set where the radio is quite
when not receiving voice communications. Oh, I see the confusion. I wrote
76 - I should have written 760 mAh. :-(((( .

Harry


"Mike Weller" wrote in message
s.com...
On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 13:34:08 GMT, "Harry Gordon"
wrote:

The battery that is in the A-5 is a Ni-MH 76 mAh.

That is a very small battery. I have an A-3, that uses the same power
as yours, and I use a 1400 mAh Ni-MH battery pack. I don't have the
exact specs for your A-5, but for my A-3, it draws 55mA just
listening, with no squelch break. At 5W (PEP) transmit power, it
draws 1.0A. So just listening, with no audio output, your radio will
have dead batteries in at most, 1.4 hours of use. If the squelch
breaks, you're drawing 240mA at full volume, which is not that loud.
So if you're monitoring a busy clearance delivery, or Tower, or
Approach control, your batteries will last 30 minutes. If you
transmit, with no listening, you will run your battery down in 4.5
minutes. There is no battery charger that you could buy that will
make the basic NiMH battery chemistry do any better.

Mike Weller