Power's getting cheap! It seems the lithium iron phosphate (LiFePo) battery market is being flooded with relatively inexpensive high capacity batteries. These cheap and lightweight power sources can negate the justification for low power QRP rigs in many applications. I've long griped on this blog and Facebook that manufacturers have gotten lazy when it comes to QRP rigs. Nobody (except Xiegu, with their G90) wants to push past the 10 watt barrier and deliver a portable HF package in the 20 - 50 watt range. The 10 watt mindset (and the silly obsession with stuffing in UHF/VHF just to get the manufacturers' favored digital mode into the mix) has paralyzed the thinking at Icom and Yaesu. The two manufacturers with the resources and skill to deliver a high quality HF field radio are too scared to take the leap.
But it's not all grim news. For a few years I've advocated building a portable rig package around the Icom IC-7300. It offers everything a portable operator needs - excellent performance, lots of output power, integrated digital mode sound card interface, effective cooling and a great tuner, all in a fairly compact package. Yaesu recently answered the IC-7300 challenge with their FT-710, by all accounts also a great radio that matches the IC-7300 feature-for-feature and does some one-ups. Both radios offer everything a field HF rig should have. Although both are a bit large for the role, considering they were initially designed as shack rigs, they are remarkably small and light weight for the features they offer. If these radios have a drawback, it's amperage draw on receive. The IC-7300 will pull about 1.25 amps while just 'idling', and the FT-710 will suck down up to 2.2 (!) amps on receive. These numbers always put a limit on field operations, particularly on extended digital mode sessions. Your choice was small, light weight batteries of limited capacity, or larger capacity batteries that either weighted a lot (think lead acid car batteries), or LiFePo batteries that offered great run times but at a much higher cost (over $300 for a 30 amp hour battery).
But cheaper batteries can change the paradigm. Most battery buyers I've talked to stop considering buying a LiFePo battery at about the 30 amp hour point, based mainly on cost. It's undeniable that these batteries offer amazing performance given their size and weight, but the prices go up almost exponentially as you go up in amp hour ratings. Thirty amp hours seemed to offer an ideal price-to-performance ratio for running a full sized rig in the field, but extended run times can mean having to turn the TX power below 50 watts. We need more (and cheaper) power!
Now, what if I told you that you can get a really cheap 100 amp hour LiFePo battery? Something about the size of a 30 amp hour lead acid battery, but a fraction of the weight? Well as Tracy, VE3TWM reports below, it's here! The battery Tracy shows off, the LiTime LiFePo4 100 Ah battery is currently on sale from the manufacturer for $199 US. Compare that with Bioenno's current price for the same capacity battery - $862. Bioenno is a highly regarded LiFePo battery manufacturer, and the battery management system boards they build into each battery are considered some of the best in the industry. But that $660 price difference between batteries is extremely compelling. Even if the LiTime battery craps out after a few years and only provides half the recharge cycles the manufacturer lists, it's still a better buy than the Bioenno offering.
W8BYH out
