"Andy" wrote in message
oups.com...
If the battery is near death will it provide the current required by
the upconverter? It's not magic and you can't get more power out of
the upconverter than you put in. I'm curious to know if you have
measured the performance with a "battery near death"?

An upconverter can't solve the available capacity problem. It can only
make it worse. (About 15 percent worse for the referenced converters).
They seem to be of no value except for powering equipment that will not
operate properly unless the available voltage is increased.

My prefered solution for emergencies is to have a handheld tranceiver
with an alkaline battery pack.

Haven't tested near death, but actually was part of the thinking. If the
battery is near death, it has a little juice left. If the radio would not
tolerate a low voltage, then I could upconvert. Other part was optimizing
the power demands of the Dittle FSG-50 radio and Cambridge vario. Found no
real difference in performance between 12V and 13.9.
And yes, I do recognize the power losses.