Got a ICOM IC-A5 hand held radio that is a few years old. I do not have the owners manual. How long should the battery take to recharge and how long should it hold the charge. any help would be appreciated. I may just need a new battery.

Tim

qmdv wrote:Got a ICOM IC-A5 hand held radio that is a few years old. I do not have the owners manual. How long should the battery take to recharge and how long should it hold the charge. any help would be appreciated. I may just need a new battery.

Tim

Tim,
http://www.icomamerica.com/en/downloads ... ocument=44
If it is flashing Red you need a new battery pack! Read section 7 of the manual.
Bill

I have an A23, which is almost the same as the A5 but smaller. The A23 has a little battery display: when it shows up, be ready because it's almost ready to shut down. It takes almost all night to recharge it, so I bought an alkaline pack for back-up (takes 4 AA batteries). If I remember right, it will hold a charge for about 8 hours before it needs recharging. The battery life was the one drawback to this model, IMO.

ASW.

qmdv wrote:Got a ICOM IC-A5 hand held radio that is a few years old. I do not have the owners manual. How long should the battery take to recharge and how long should it hold the charge. any help would be appreciated. I may just need a new battery.

Tim

I have the original "blue brick" -- Terra 720 that works for COM no nav . I also have several
Garmin 190's GPS/COM that need batteries. All work with a power cord to panel. Terra was bought off of ebay for $60 bucks and is VERY POWERFUL -with external antenna on 182 I can talk easy 100 miles in air.Had a Icom A20 and King KX99 which I sold. I have several external antennas (one top and 1 bottom) to hook into. Another on top is hooked into panel com.
Good antenna on hand held is important to work well.

With some shopping on-line, I was able to find a non-OEM replacement nickle metal-hydride battery *and* charger. And for less than the OEM ni-cad battery. Maybe worth looking into.

so I bought an alkaline pack for back-up (takes 4 AA batteries).

I have an A22 which is a "few" years older yet and when the Li ion battery died I went w/ the AA battery pack. I use the hybrid rechargeable AA's from Ray-O-Vac ( Target stores ) I have run the radio on this pack for at least four hours and it takes about two hours to recharge the batteries. The hybrids hold their charge far longer than the standard rechargeables.

In the field I recharge from my 12V roll up Solar panel.

TD

All I know is that the stock rechargeables in the A5/A23 sucked and soured quickly.

I guess the "Hybrid" Ray-0-Vac batteries have been renamed Platinum rechargeables

http://www.rayovac.com/recharge/Platinum_products.shtml

I really don't understand how these things work, but they hold a charge far longer than a standard NiMH rechargeable.

Check ebay for a new battery if you decide to buy one. I found a brand new one from a guy who specializes in batteries and it was way cheaper than anywhere else.

In the field I recharge from my 12V roll up Solar panel.

Tell me more - how well it works, where you got it, how long it takes to charge. Thanks!

ASW.

TomD wrote:In the field I recharge from my 12V roll up Solar panel.

In the field I recharge straight from my Concorde RG with alligator clips

Tell me more - how well it works, where you got it, how long it takes to charge. Thanks!

A bunch of us from the old Maule BB got together and bought a case of 12W SUNLINQ folding solar panels. I think we paid $65 ea or thereabouts. They are about 1.5 lbs with cables and the panel itself folds up to about 8" x 4".

You pretty much can charge anything that uses a 12V DC current. I have recharged my GPS, Handheld, laptop, etc.

Output depends on the amount of sunlight, but in full sun a set of 4 AA batteries will recharge in an hour or so. In full sun I think they put out about 0.9-1 Amp

TD

I may be full of hot air here but if I rememeber correctly one has to make sure to limit the amout of time on the charger to no more than 8 hours on the Icom battery. I bought one of those light timers and plugged my charger into.
WW