Impress portable battery charging

[speedway_navigator]

Some events I work at give out a radio, spare battery and charger for a 12-14 hour event. In the past this caused some problems with users trying to juggle all this equipment in the plastic bags we use and stuff has been 'gravity checked'.
My suggestions to not issue chargers have been ignored because 1. they don't want to admit it's a good idea and no one else thought of it and
2. there is no reason to change or adapt what is on a piece of paper, it's just our policy.

I get to the remote sites and of course the spare is in the charger even though it was charged before I issued it.
In the old days this was bad practice but I'm not up to speed on Impress batteries and chargers with all the smarts built in.

Do the batteries and chargers sense the charge level and just maintain a trickle charge or will the system figure it's a good time for a discharge and recharge which could render the battery useless depending on where it is during the cycle?

 

[GTR8000]

If you put a fully charged IMPRES/IMPRES 2 battery into an IMPRES/IMPRES 2 charger, the indicator will probably flash green a few times, then go solid green indicating charging is complete.

In theory, you can leave the battery in the charger indefinitely and it will not overcharge it. The charger is intelligent enough to monitor the battery and trickle to top off when necessary. Some would argue it's not the best practice, but we are far beyond the old days of NiCad cells and dumb chargers. Even the practice of leaving a radio on while in the charger, while still not ideal, is actually referenced in some of the IMPRES firmware and MSI has taken into account that in real life, it happens.

The charger will not perform a recalibration cycle with the battery just sitting in the charger untouched. You would have to remove and reinsert it within a few seconds to force a recalibration cycle (amber indicator). The charger will automatically initiate a recalibration cycle upon inserting a battery that hasn't run through one of those cycles in ~30 days. You can override this by pulling the battery out and putting it right back in to resume normal charging. Sometimes the remove/reinsert to either start or stop a recalibration cycle is a little finicky and you have to do it a few times before it takes.

So the bottom line for your scenario is that it really doesn't matter if they throw the battery right back on the charger, not going to harm a thing.

 

[nokones]

A 3000+ Mah Impress Battery should last 12-14 hours for your event especially if the battery goes through the recalibration cycle every 30 days and has a capacity of at least 100%. There is no need to carry a charger, but it is a good idea to carry a spare battery, I always do, you never know if your event or shift will get extended and for how long.

I have a couple Motorola Impress batteries that are at 97% and 102% and they are 12 years old and 10 years old respectively.

Also, I have 8 after-market brand Impress batteries and they are 2-3 years old and have capacities of 110%-113%. I don't keep them in the charger, but they all get put in the charger to be recalibrated the first of every month.

I use the 10 batteries with my XTS5000 radios. I have two Motorola Impress batteries for my XPR7550e radio. One battery is 2 months old and the other battery is 9 years old. My Impress charger for these two batteries do not have a display, but they get recalibrated at the first of each month.