Hercules II power amp. I'm running it on a marine deep cycle battery with a
15amp charger.
The problem is that the amp doesn't appear to produce rated power on all bands.
The Hercules II is supposed to be supplied with 13.8 VDC. With only a 15
amp charger, that deep cycle battery will only make it up to 13.8 volts
many hours after you have drained it with the Hercules II, and then as
soon as you transmit for a few seconds, it will be back down to around
12.6 VDC or less.
It is probably fine to go on using the Hercules II powered by a big lead
acid battery, as long as the slightly lower RF power output is
acceptable. You really need a bigger charger though. Do the math and
figure out how long it will take a 15 amp charger to put back the ampere
hours used by a one minute transmission which has a peak current draw of
about 100 amps. You'll either transmit very little, or you will ruin
that brand new battery.
Using a big battery, when you don't have a power supply that can handle
the peak current is an okay solution, but the power supply really needs
to produce a much higher percentage of the needed current than just
about 15%. I would recommend at least a 30 Amp rated charger, and 50
would be better.
Also, is it just a charger, or is it a filtered power supply? Many
battery chargers have little or no filtering, and if you have it hooked
up when you transmit, you're gonna have hum or buzz on your signal.
DE N6KB
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