[Elecraft] Off the Grid

[William Levy]

The K3 runs on a car battery and an ordinary 60 amp car battery will run it
for easily 24 hours without anything going amiss.
I lived in Africa in the 70's and I never ran down the car's battery or the
one in camp by operating my radios which in those days were Atlas and
TenTec 2's.  In the 80's I ran a 500 watt Metrum Solid State 500M amp and
it had it's own battery and I would use it for hours keeping skeds from 5Z
and 5H to W2.

I had a generator in camp and would trickle the batteries whenever we ran
the generator which was long enough in the day to keep the fridges cold.

The batteries are the least of your problems as are the radios.

If you are using battery chargers the automotive trickle chargers are more
than adequate. Nobody operates off grid for hours and hours anyway.
Whatever you have around to charge a car/truck battery when you
inadvertantly leave the car on all night will work just fine too.

Only the guys that use solar cells have to worry about overcharging
batteries. None of us have to worry about car/truck/marine batteries
running down in 24 hours and I believe frankly you could run a contest
weekend with one too but have never done it. I have never worried about
whether my voltages were 13.8 or 12. Nothing ever got below that for me and
I used to ham for hours and hours when younger.

Your off the grid antenna should be of more concern. I like long wires.
Longer the better.

73, Bill N2WL