Did I wreck my battery?

[RobertE]

I've got a Concorde RG battery and left my master switch on. So it's fully discharged. I recall reading somewhere that this is very, very bad for a recombinant gas battery. Did I blow it? The battery is about a year old and has been well behaved.

Thanks.

[N201MKTurbo]

Charge it back up and see if it works. If you want to be really safe, take it to someone who has a capacity tester and have it tested.

[N601RX]

A single discharge will not destroy it as long as you charge it back up immediately.

[laytonl]

Most likely it's okay. Just recharge at a low amperage rate for a couple of days. I've done the same thing before and the RGM recovered fine. I just found out today that I left my overhead lights on and drained mine again. So it's on a trickle charge now. Let me know how yours does and I will do likewise. By the way, the overhead lights are either coming out or I'm building a timer shutoff for them! Lee

[M20F]

Use a very slow charge rate, airplane batteries do not deal with rapid charging. Mike Busch has a nice article on the topic.

[Sabremech]

I listened to the Concorde battery rep at the MAPA convention and he recommends letting the battery take all the amperage it wants and control the voltage. You might go to Concordes website and download the manual for your battery. It will tell you what the best method for bringing your battery back to life.

[larryb]

I destroyed a 2 year old Concorde by accidently turning on the cabin lights. It would not hold a charge after that. Now my cabin light sockets have no bulbs.

[DonMuncy]

Lee,

Unless you are a lot smarter than me, it will take some time to design a timer. I did mine, and will be glad to share the schematic.

[yvesg]

555 timer guys?

Yves

[DonMuncy]

The 555 Timer would probably work fine, but I'm not smart enough to figure out how to wire it. I started working with a capacitor and resistor to bleed off the juice. Building one that would work for timing 30 seconds or so was easy. Getting one that would time about 10 minutes (about the time I wanted), turned out to be much more difficult. I wound up using two transistors hooked up as a Darlington pair, finally worked fine.

I figured one needs about 5 to 10 minutes to unload the plane, etc.

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

[laytonl]

Don, I would love to see your timer. I'm leaning toward a 555, but a darlington pair with the right size capacitor would be easier. Lee

[DonMuncy]

Lee,

I will PM you.

[ArtVandelay]

What's the current draw with with light off?

[larryb]

I considered a timer. But for the few times I fly at night, and the fewer times I would care to use the lights, a flashlight is easier.

[yvesg]

To have 10 minutes delay out of any RC pair means using a rather large electrolytic capacitor which has by definition large tolerance. I recall when playing with this that it was not that easy to make one fairly accurate but do you really care? The best would be one device that would start to flicker when approaching the 10 minutes (or whatever set limit) and if the button not pressed, would turn off...

A bit like those car wash I use where you put 4 dollars for 3 minutes and have a last coin alert light turning on telling you to put more money in otherwise the whole thing is going to shut off.

Yves

[N201MKTurbo]

Why not just use a small micro controller like a PIC. the code would be easy and it could completely shut down after the timeout. It could wake back up by toggling the switch.

Just remember to size your light driver transistor for the cold resistance of the light. The starting current will be much higher then the current you get using the rated wattage.

For you analog guys, I would suggest a 74HC123 one shot instead of a 555.

[Hank]

"First World problems" indeed! Us vintage folks without baggage lights or overhead lights of any kind except the red spotlights to aim at the panel wonder, why not just close the doors? Doesn't that turn the lights off? Or remove the offending bulb. I've loaded and unloaded without a problem using my flashlight, but inside a well lit hangar is preferable (not an option when traveling). Stack large stuff on the ground behind the flaps, pile little things on the horizontal stab, search for things missed, then load into the car.

But I love my Concorde! Shocked at the price, but now at 5-1/2 years.

[1964-M20E]

This topic is starting to remind of circuits 1 or electronics 1 and 2 from college.

[Hank]

This topic is starting to remind of circuits 1 or electronics 1 and 2 from college.

Oh, the horror!

[Mooneymite]

 

[laytonl]

I use a homemade half wave rectifier like this for my lawn mower battery during the winter. It works fine. The battery should be removed and isolated for safety though. Lee

[laytonl]

Robert, did your battery revive okay? After a few days on the battery minder mine was fine. Lee

[Hank]

I use a homemade half wave rectifier like this for my lawn mower battery during the winter. It works fine. The battery should be removed and isolated for safety though. Lee

I'm glad that works for you, Lee, but I don't know what it is--my mind jumped the tracks the first day of Electrical Ohysics when the prof said that the equations were written for an imaginary positive particle going through the circuit clockwise instead of the real electron moving through the circuit CCW. That was the first two minutes of the first day . . . Why has no one bothered to fix the equations? It's been what, 120, 130 years now?

I just use a $35 battery charger that I picked up cheap at Walmart. But I haven't let my Concorde run down all the way, either, probably because my plane has no overhead light, and the yoke clock must be wound at least once a week.

What else can a poor Mechanical Engineer do? I can play with a box of parts and put them together without knowing what they make, but electricity doesn't work on ways that are obvious, intuitive or even seemingly possible sometimes.

Good luck with your batteries! Love my Concorde AGX, installed 12/2010 and going strong.