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[TowerTalk] TowerTalk Lightning Protection-UPS Power Bullet-Proofing

To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] TowerTalk Lightning Protection-UPS Power Bullet-Proofing
From: CQK8DO@aol.com (CQK8DO@aol.com)
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 16:54:54 -0400 (EDT)
In my small town in the frozen wilds of michigan  
  (btw, the name michigan < meechee gon> comes from the Pottawtomie language
and translates as "my nose froze off last week" :) 
where what you warm country types call a brown out is considered by the
locals here  to be a major power surge,  I have been operating my business
computers and a LAN off of a homemade OOPS, er uh, that is an UPS...
This consists of a pair of 180 amp hour, deep cycle batteries... a 1500 watt
Trace invertor DC to AC...  and a 45 amp battery charger (Todd Engineering
Sales DC 45 - 14 volt, weighs about 4 pounds! ) that is designed for
motorhomes and continuous battery charging without boiling the batteries...It
accepts 90 to 135 v ac input with regulated output...

I found that a commercial UPS that would give me 15 minutes to shut down was
about $700... for the same amount I have a system that has saved my bacon
(data) untold numbers of times and will operate the server and most of the
terminals for 3.5 hours before running out of electrons, which gives us
adequate time for an orderly shutdown... In fact, only once in the past year
has the power stayed off long enough to shut us down, generally we just break
out the flashlights and keep rolling... And, of course, I have a line running
to my desk to power the 706 for a little R&R now and then...

A smaller and much more economical system can be made up from a single deep
cycle battery (off the fishing boat?), a 300 watt invertor and a small
battery charger 3-10 amp with a trickle feature... YMMV SAR 

Denny

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