Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

[19dsniper]

I have an EF Johnson 5100 radio that is my personal radio that i use for my Fire Department. The reason is that i already had the radio, and since we are volunteer we are only issued pagers.. Well i ordered a Rapid charger and a new battery. It served me well for about 1 year. In the last 3 months i am on my 3rd battery. I ordered some 4000Mah batteries and the were AWESOME... for for the first day anyways.. both lasted at least 16 hours the first time i used them, after charging them over night. Now i am only getting between 4-6 hours out of them. ??? And this is RX only. When i am occasionally TX i get less than 4 hours out of them. Also, when the battery gets low and starts to beep at me, i only get about 10 minutes to change out the battery or the radio shuts down.. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am thinking that i may have some bad batteries, but if that is the case, why did they work so well the first day?
I hope this is the right area for this question, if not, please dirrect me.
Thanks everyone.

 

[USAFDoug]

Re: Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

Are you able to recondition the batteries on that charger you have?

We had EF Johnson radios for about a year when the Air Force went with the cheapest bidder. Glad they got rid of them!

 

[19dsniper]

Re: Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

no i am not able to recondition the batteries with my current charger. Do you know of a charger that you can recommend? I contacted EF Johnson last night and left a voicemail at the Dallas corporate office. I am hoping to hear back from them today. I dont care if i need a new charger... i just NEED to make sure this thing will work. The radio is one of the best I have ever used. We use Motorola as our portables and on our trucks, and that is what i prefer, I just cant afford one.

 

[mexicanmatch]

Re: Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

Do your batteries have a memory chip? if so sometimes you have to let them drain all the way down then recharge them. MM

 

[19dsniper]

Re: Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

I have never heard of a "memory chip" in batteries, so i wouldnt know. I do however know that some batteries will hold a memory. I tried for a while, running the batteries down till they were dead and then charging them, but they seamed to hold less of a charge after that. So what i have been doing lately is just using them for a while and then throwing them on the charger after a while. This seems to let the battery stay charged longer.. but is sucks for when we have calls and i have now clue how long the battery will last. I never did hear back from corporate office today. i will be calling them back tomorrow. I will update then with what they tell me. Hopefully i can find their products elsewhere cheaper. They are wanting $100 for a new battery according to their website.

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Re: Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: 19dsniper</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So what i have been doing lately is just using them for a while and then throwing them on the charger after a while. </div></div>

While I'm NOT working with the same equipment as you are, I will say that this is absolutely the wrong thing to be doing with the Ni/Cad batteries, as you alluded to in the beginning of your post. Sometimes those "memories" can be burned through, or whatever it's called by bombarding the battery with a capacitor and whatnot, but I don't know enough to direct that process.

Now the Ni/mH and Li/H (or whatever) appear to not have a memory at all, work best when they are 'topped up' and are at their most vulnerable when at the low end of their charge. As in, when the battery is almost dead, and if you were to pull a heavy load, that in itself can damage/kill the battery.

The new batteries seem to work the opposite of the old Ni/Cad batteries, and last longer too. Not to mention, more powerful in the same size and even smaller packaging.

In general, that is.

 

[19dsniper]

Re: Anyone here have experience with EF Johnson?

BTT