14 volt battery source

I would like to upgrade to a 14 volt battery since my current 7 amp hour 12 volt battery is not quite enough since I added an ipaq running winpilot to my glider. Do I have to add a 2 volt battery to my 12 volt or are there 14 volt batteries that can be purchased? I looked at wings and wheels website but they only offer the 2 volts or 12 volts, nothing in 14 volts. Any body that has a source for 14 volt batteries please point me in that direction.

Thanks, Joe Simmers Ohio, usa

You can usually find these cells at Batteries Plus, but not cheap. If you're in a major city, check the Yellow Pages for industrial battery suppliers; otherwise, the website can probably hook you up with someone.

Not quit enough

This means you drain too much current and the voltage drops too low under charge

Why not switch to a 12V 12Ah battery ? They are standard and deliver more current (and for a longer time too)

I power an LX-5000, an LX-20 and a radio all day without problems on 1 12Ah battery

Did you measure the voltage drop in the wiring ?

The issue is how long you can run all the devices off a battery. What determines this is the Amp Hour capacity of the battery, not the voltage. Increasing the voltage is not the solution. Just put in a larger 12 volt battery. Perhaps 10 AH.

Jim N483SZ

Your voltage is probably not the problem. The problem is most likely the amperage. I will get arguments on this, but most 12 volt equipment is designed to work down 10.5 volts. This is the voltage at which a lead-acid battery is determined to be dead. The arguments I will most likely get is a drop in transmitting power as the voltage drops. However, if a 12 volt 7 amp-hour battery is too small, then a 14v 7 amp-hour battery is most likely too small also.

The amperage of the battery has two effects. One is the amount of equipment that can be operated with the battery still being able to maintain a voltage of 12.6 (this limitation is called internal resistance). The second is the amount of amperage that a battery can deliver over a specific time before the battery will drop down to 10.5 volts. There is a reason that automobiles have batteries in excess of 7 amphours.

Now...about that 7 amp-hour rating. There are 10 hour batteries and 20 hour batteries. A 10 hour 7 amp-hour battery will deliver 0.7 amps for 10 hours before dropping to 10.5 volts. A 20 hour battery will deliver half that amperage for 20 hours.

0.7 amps is not a whole lot of amperage. I would suggest that you buy a bigger 12 volt battery.

Marty Pautz

Could we please say current, not amperage? There is no such word as

100 years old this year.
www.m-w.com One entry found for amperage. Main Entry: am·per·age Pronunciation: 'am-p(&rij, -'pir-ij Function: noun Date: 1893 : the strength of a current of electricity expressed in amperes

Hmmmm.... we are starting to stray off topic...but...I will get back there

Before going to college, I couldn't even spell enginear, now I are one.

However, Amperage is the strength of the electric current as measured in amperes. I have been using the word for decades, but that doesn't make it right. So, I looked it up in my dictionary. The word was there, but the dictionary is as old as my education. I though that maybe the word is nolonger current usage for current; after all I first learned about vacuum tubes. So I checked the Merriam-Webster web site. It is still listed under www.m-w.com.

Now that I have defended the current usage of the word, I will confess that I missused the word once to refer to the amp-hour rating of the battery. The amp-hour rating is the capacity of the battery not the amperage.

Now back to the topic...

I have a 12v 12 amp-hr PowerSonic. It cost $35.00 I buy my batteries at: http://www.tnrtechnical.com/powersonic.html

They have batteries of other amp-hr capacity. If you really want a 14v battery, you will have to go else where. They do not have 2v cells to add to the 12v.

Should we also always say 'potential' rather than 'voltage'?

Hello Bill,

They sound like a good battery for soaring application. Now, what is the price?