Battery Charger lesson learned

[NC Bill]

Introduced my wife to the "kite" on Sunday. We sat in the hangar on the ODYSSEY 7v charger for maybe 25 minutes. ENGINE page showed only 11.1v when I shut down. Strange. Checked the charger. GREEN light signifying battery fully charged. Left the charger connected over night for the first time.

 

Next day was the SKYVIEW v3.0 firmware upgrade. YIPPEE. First in my neighborhood to download and off to the hangar. Charger has a green light. Climb in and insert the USB stick and fire up the avionics. Hit UPDATE! As the screens come and go with each reboot (maybe 5) I catch a glimpse of the ENGINE page. What? 10.3v! Well you guessed it. Couldn't stop the upgrade process, so just prayed it'd would finish before it shut down.

 

Anyway the battery drained and I wasn't able to start the engine.

 

I called several folks asking opinions and the likely suspects identified were the battery was bad (2 months and 35 hours old), the ODYSSEY charger (2 months old), the voltage regulator, or something unknown was draining the battery.

 

Turns out it was a bad ODYSSEY battery charger. Worked fine for 2 months - then out. What made it hard to tell was that the GREEN "fully charged" light was lit when it should be AND when it shouldn't have been.

 

The happy ending...I called AIRCRAFT SPRUCE and they shipped me a free replacement 2d DAY AIR yesterday. Didn't need a credit card. Took it on faith I'd return the old one with their RMA# which I did that afternoon. Always been good to deal with them but I thought this was exceptional.

 

Bill