Repeater - 1500Ah Battery Install

4/11/09Today was the perfect day for a large repeater site project, raining and about 40 degrease First some information on what and why... The batteries are GNB, Absolyte GP 1,500Ah 6v each pack. They weight in at almost 900Lbs each. They are an industrial AGM type, and have a design life of twenty years at 77deg. F.New, these batteries will run you about $12,000.00 yes that is twelve thousand. The club was presented with an offer of $900 for two batteries that were removed from service at about one year. (decommissioned cell site) this price included shipping from Long Island NY. to our loading dock. Due to the aging of our existing battery bank and the added capacity of this offer the BOD voted to accept the repeater committee's recommendation and purchase the batteries.Advantages of the new batteries include:

• Maintenance free
• A Lot more capacity
• Non spillable
• Believe it or not they take less floor space than our old ones
• Faster recharge capability
• Less gassing

Our first challenge is moving the batteries off the trailer and into the shed. This task was greatly aided with the use of a skid steer! But... it was not that easy. For those of you that are not familiar with the repeater site, it should be mentioned that our shed is on the back side of the tower. The problem was that the skid steer would not fit through the tower legs with the bucket up. So the batteries were moved close to the shed and then picked back up once the skid steer was under the tower. Even then there was no more than an inch of clearance for the tracks to fit by and the procedure was very slow going.The skid steer was only able to get the batteries to the door and just in it, after that they were put on 1/2 PVC conduit and rolled/slid into position. Once in the shed they were raised into position and secured to the mounting frame.  How we did that is classified. Here are the batteries all racked up against the wall. The bottom one is about one inch off the floor and the top one is about five feet to the top of it, and forty two inches wide.Thanks to all involved in today's install:

• Mark Avery - N1ZPO
• Paul Finnegan - WA1JSE
• Gaynor Foster - KB1ROE
• Christopher Dean - KB1PVQ