An oldie but goodie back to life…

[N1SQB]

Every once in a while I dig into my closet and find gear that I forgot I had. This time it was my good ol Uniden BC200 XLT. I used to use this scanner for all my aircraft monitoring. It has awesome sensitivity on that band. It also has a nice tight squelch and good crisp audio. The reason I stopped using it was because the battery ( Nicad 650mAh) died and would not take a charge. I looked around last week and found that Batteries America sells ready made packs. I chose.I chose the highest one they had. This is not just a pack, it’s a Sanyo ENELOOP 2100mAh Ni-MH pack. That’s more than 3X the original pack. Fast forward to today. It arrived this morning and to my surprise, it was pre-charged and ready to use. I did the swap and bingo!!!!! ATC is coming in beautifully on my Boston Air Center frequencies.
I did not NEED to do this for aircraft monitoring.
I have a Yaesu FTA-550L, an older Icom IC-A3, and a Bendix King KX99 with a new battery.
But it was nice to bring this scanner back to life and hear ATC once again through it….I’m off to the airport…😎

Manny.

 

[K4EET]

@N1SQB Manny, nicely done my friend. Do you have a NiMH battery charger? They are different from the older NiCd chargers. 73, Dave

 

[N1SQB]

@N1SQB Manny, nicely done my friend. Do you have a NiMH battery charger? They are different from the older NiCd chargers. 73, Dave

I do but they suggest using the original charger power cube and charging for a longer period.
I called them and here is what the tech suggested for this radio and battery pack:
They come pre-charged. Use them until they die. Then charge them the first time for 16 hours.
After that, once a week charge overnight to “top off the tank” was his analogy. Apparently they have an overcharge protection. They are also very slow to discharge. So I should be good for a long time with this pack since I don’t use the scanner much.