Ship's Power (or portable GPS) Question

On Mon, 28 May 2007 14:59:40 -0400, Kyle Boatright wrote:

I'm an old technology guy, flying comfortably behind my Lowrance 100, but
I've encountered a problem where there shouldn't be one: The internal
batteries still die and take the unit down, even when running on "ship's
power".

Last fall, I added a power outlet in the cockpit to power the Lowrance (as
well as provide an always hot point where I can hook a battery tender during
winter months).

The strange thing is that even using ship's power, the unit still dies from
time to time "wanting" new batteries. Makes no sense to me, since the 4
AA's in it should last a long time given that they shouldn't see any drain..
Besides, shouldn't the unit function just fine on ship's power even if the
internal batteries are dead or nearly so?

By the way, having the always hot circuit for the battery tender is very
handy...

Thoughts on what the GPS/power problem might be?

KB


I'm not familiar with your particular unit, but some units external power
only charges the batteries and doesn't run the unit directly. So If your
running non-nicads in it (akaline) then they will not be charged but just
run down like normal. An akalines life can be extended a little by
"charging" them but not drastically so.
John

On Mon, 28 May 2007 14:59:40 -0400, Kyle Boatright wrote:

Thoughts on what the GPS/power problem might be?

Most give an indication when power switches from external to battery,
newer Lowrance models even read out external voltage. Do you see this
indication when plugging and unplugging external power? Make sure your
outlet is still putting out power like you assume. A buddy of mine has
one (Lowrance 100), but doesn't have the adapter so I couldn't verify
this...

I have a Magellan GPS that will kill any batteries (2xAA) left in it, in
a matter of days. One possible reason is that the internal lithium
battery has failed and its trying to maintain memory and other things.
However if it has external power, it won't run the internal batteries
down. I just never use it anywhere where it has always on power,
everything gets turned off with the master switch. I simply pull the
batteries out everytime I'm finished with it for the day. Drawback is
that you have to initialize it everytime you want to use it...

I have a fear that our Lowrance 2000C could cause the batteries to leak
in it, so they come out everytime it won't be used for more than a
couple of days...