Lithium-ion battery capacity test

I did a capacity test on my newly imported lithium-ion battery: Type DC-12680 the capacity is supposed to be 6800 mAH.

The image below shows clearly that the capacity is only about 2400 mAH i.e. 1/3 of the advertised capacity.

The battery has been on charge for 9 hours since then and is still not fully charged (Red LED still on). I therefor assume the batteries cannot be recharged at a high rate. 

Conclusion: 

It is unacceptable that the capacity is so much lower than the supposed capacity.
Rapid recharging is not possible with the provided charger.

IMHO they are still worthwhile considering. They are compact and weigh almost nothing. This is ideal for back packing with ultra-light QRP equipment.

http://zs6a.blogspot.com/2014/06/ultralight-portable-station-batteries.html

Lithium-ion 6680 mAH battery capacity test.

Exceptional CW operator 4W/N1YC

I have been chasing James 4W/N1YC (9V1YC) for a while, conditions are not very favourable between Timor Leste and South Africa and he is constantly being bombarded by a enormous pile-up.

He has been pretty weak at best of times on all the bands, but even with all the odds against me (us) I have managed to work him twice. In both cases, he responded after the first or second call.

I am most impressed with operators of this calibre.

Long live CW

Unexpected surprises – Cambodia on JT65

I saw John AE5X blogging about working Cambodia and his concern about whether the person was legit.

As luck would have it yesterday I was playing with JT65 on 20m and I saw XU7AEU calling CQ. I was quite surprised to see such a rare entity using such a slow mode. However believing in the motto “work first worry later” I called in reply, the first 2 calls where in vain, I was swamped by the stronger European stations. I reverted to “Plan-B” I called slightly higher up in the band and that worked, the rest is history.

I looked up Alex XU7AEU on QRZ.com

I think I am extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

Quote from QRZ.com:  XU7AEU

I will be in the Kingdom of Cambodia once again between the 19th and 28th of August 2014 operating from my usual QTH (our office roof in downtown Phnom Penh). After the lightning strike in July i'm still using the Yaesu FT-817 into a 20m dipole. I have brought more dipole wire so i'll be stringing up some other bands as soon as I can.

By shear chance I caught him on day 1 of his stay. It also shows the value of using JT65 with QRP and less than optimum antennas.

And if that is not enough, he used LoTW