EMERGENCY POWER!
A new 'enhancement' to my home operations and my packet station.
The batteries weigh about 75lbs apiece. I now have 2 of the ones pictured below as well as 4 smaller 75ah ones, which are all attached in series now to power my home station.
(Battery OUTSIDE of the box I normally have it in, so you can see how big it actually is. Newspaper under it so you can see how wide it is, roughly..)
My current battery setup is as follows:
2 100ah batteries plus 4 75ah batteries. (The 75ah are slightly smaller than the 100 pictured above). This gives me a total of 500ah capacity. Although, USEABLE capacity is roughly half the actual capacity as you don't want to drop the voltage too low, so I have roughly 250ah of capacity.
2 Harbor freight 1.25a float chargers-these are constantly on and keep the batteries floated to where they should be. They also supply enough amperage that at standby they keep the batteries floated and run the radio. Of course, when I'm talking on the station it draws more than they provide.
1 Black and Decker battery charger. Though intended for car batteries, it works for this application. The charger is automatic, if I become VERY (and I mean VERY) long winded on the home station, it will kick in and start charging at 2, 4, or 5 amps once the battery voltage gets around 12.75v. So far I have only been able to accomplish this once, and that was after 2 hours of straight conversation, and it was simplex at medium power. Most of the time the batteries won't even fall below 13v as they 'regain' some power between transmissions from the Harbor Freight chargers.
Longevity experiment
About a week ago I took the chargers offline to see how long, under normal usage, the batteries would hold up. I did not turn the charging system back on for 5 days, and used it as I would normally (ie, was at work during the day, turned it on once I came home, monitored mostly but had a few conversations). After 4 days, the battery voltage was still at 12.78v, though it would slowly drop to 12.65 as I talked on it. At that point I stopped my experiment, but I figure I could get close to a week out of the current battery bank. In an emergency situation, I wouldn't be talking except as needed, and if it got really bad, I would probably go to using my scanner to monitor repeaters and only turn on the radio when needed.
Once I ended the experiment, it only took 45 minutes for the 3 chargers to bring the batteries back up to where they normally are, which is good in a situation where I might lose power, but get it back in spurts. It would also work as I could hook the chargers to a generator as needed to keep them topped off (say, at the same time I'm running it to keep my refrigerator cold). That will be my next investment-a small generator large enough to power my refrigerator/freezer, and have a light or 2 on while doing so, as well as recharge the batteries if need be. May also come in handy for Field Day operations.