-Gary dunfee is a mobile x-ray tech and eaa member.  the batteries he
uses come in matched sets.  when one goes "bad" (performance drops)
the whole batch gets replaced.  Gary gives us these batteries.  he
claims they are the highest quality made, exceeding the odyssey
batteries. they are a bit heavier because of the additional plates
inside.  my hangar mate has at least three years and maybe 500hrs on
his. I recently put a fresh one in my plane.  I flew it an hour and it
worked fine.  I was amazed at how fast the prop turned over,
indicating how old the prior battery had gotten.  the battery had been
sitting on the shelf a year maybe before I installed it.  it showed
about 11 1/2 volts then. I flew to Camarillo last week.  about 20
miles from crater lake, smack in the middle of the cascade mountains,
I noticed my egt's shooting up 100 degrees.  I pushed the mixture to
full rich, but that only slowed rate.  I pulled some power and got
them to start back down.  I realized my rose ignition had tripped. also I had not shut off my strobe and wigwag lights.  my volt meter
showed 8 volts.  I figured I had lost my alternator.  I shut down
everything.  I had just been dropped by flight following because of
radar coverage.  my wife was very calm!  I was flying the t-craft
version of the rv, no electrical system.  I even shut off my gps since
it had switched to its battery.  Klamath falls was less than 30
minutes.  then I noticed my voltage was up to 10 volts.  interesting. I decided to shoot for Carson city and save my 8500' of altitude.  a
bit later I saw 11 1/2 volts.  thank god I kept the altitude.  at one
point Ellen say "there's an airport below us".  yeah, RNO, ceiling
8400'.  so much for my off and on gps technique.  voltage was showing
13 1/2 volts now.  I tried turning things back on, and there seemed to
be no problems.  we got gas at Carson city, lunch at minde, and flew
to Camarillo, no problems.  I wasn't able to talk with anyone about
this and flew back, 6 hrs, with no problems, 13 1/2 volts the whole
time. so, is it possible the battery had a charge that wore off and
then went into some deep charge mode, overloading my little
nippondenso alternator?  the most amps I ever saw was 20 while it was
trying to get back to the 13 volt mark.  maybe leaving my lights on
was too much?  has this problem fixed itself, or do I need to pull the
alternator and battery to have them tested?  I used to pretty much
ignore the volt meter while flying.  not anymore. Kevin Lane Portland, OR e-mail-> n3773@comcast.net
web-> http://home.comcast.net/~n3773
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