Lectro WM suitable batteries

[Parker Brown]

Hi everyone,

Quick question. I have a Lectrosonics WM waterproof Tx that I've just noticed works very poorly with PowerEx NiMH AAs. I rarely use the WM and when I do it's usually with lithium AAs, which have always worked fine. I recently popped in the NiMH batteries with a full charge and the power LED is immediately flashing between green and red, the RM works unreliably with it and battery life is very short. I called Lectrosonics about it thinking that maybe my unit might have a problem and they said that there are most likely differences in the design that require the WM to use only lithium AAs. Has anyone else experienced this? What batteries work well in your WMs?

Thanks,

Parker

[LarryF]

Hi everyone,

Quick question. I have a Lectrosonics WM waterproof Tx that I've just noticed works very poorly with PowerEx NiMH AAs. I rarely use the WM and when I do it's usually with lithium AAs, which have always worked fine. I recently popped in the NiMH batteries with a full charge and the power LED is immediately flashing between green and red, the RM works unreliably with it and battery life is very short. I called Lectrosonics about it thinking that maybe my unit might have a problem and they said that there are most likely differences in the design that require the WM to use only lithium AAs. Has anyone else experienced this? What batteries work well in your WMs?

Thanks,

Parker

Hi Parker,

Please let us know who you talked to. The WM works well on NiMh and is my recommended battery for keeping operational costs low. The WM will also work reasonably well on alkalines since the load is shared between two batteries. Lithiums are great but not necessary.

 

The battery indicator on any of our transmitters can not read NiMh batteries correctly. The reasons have been posted many times but is basically that the NiMh voltage does not drop with discharge. The transmitter sees a constant 1.2 Volts which is close to the point at which the LED goes from green to red. Try putting in the fresh NiMh batteries, ignore the power LED and see how long the unit runs until it dies. The WM can operate on as little as 0.8 Volts.

 

I don't know why the RM is unreliable with NiMh in the WM. That is strange and it is possible there is something wrong with the WM. You (we) will know more after you do the run down test.

Best Regards,

Larry Fisher

Lectrosonics

p.s. Again, please let us know who you spoke to. We need to bring that person up to date, gently.

[LarryF]

OK. Our web site is confusing, even to our customer service people. There is a reason though. We only list one type battery for the WM but it is because is that we would have had to do repeat testing for each type of battery that we recommended. This is a recent change by the various bureaucracies. This would have cost us an additional $12,000 to test all three battery types even though we know the WM acts exactly the same no matter what type of battery is in it. Therefore we recommend one type battery for the WM and that is a lithium. We also can't publish run times for other battery types. The next new transmitter will recommend an alkaline battery since customers will figure out that they can use batteries with more capacity than an alkaline.

 

And this is why the most fearsome words in the English language are, "Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

Best,
Larry F
Lectro

[Rick Reineke]

"Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

OT:  I think the 'infamous' Obama-care inoperative website sez that too.

Thanks Larry

[Brandon Pert]

Is it possible that your batteries are near the end of their life? I use the Maha-C9000 to occasionally analyze my batteries and also maintain a soft conditioning schedule with my MH-C801D chargers. Powerex recommends a soft conditioning every 10 charges. I've been getting much better life out of my Nimh batts this way.