I used an LED drop-in and D battery adapters for AA Tenergy rechargeables.
I am now "prepped" as they say with a truly camouflaged flashlight with a much longer battery life.
Posted on 11/30/2012 11:17:00 AM PST by Kartographer
Over the last year or so I have written a number of “reports” for our small group that have guided food and water purchase and storage, meds, weapons and ammo, finances, communication, etc. In each of these I have usually tried to look ahead, seeing both the disaster period, survival and then the recovery, if we are skilled and lucky enough to get to that shore. If you manage to survive but are not prepared for the long term recovery what are you going to do, wait for FEMA?
Some of the un-thought of items and ideas that I have addressed:
Water Meds Batteries Tools Materials Fluids
(Excerpt) Read more at modernsurvivalonline.com ...
The toilet paper is what gives you a slower consistent burn. Otherwise WOOOOSH!!!!
A laryngoscope?
whoa....
Maybe you all know the rechargeables you get at regular stores, Energizer, RayoVac, Duracell, have been knocked down in power - the body is the size of a D, but there is AA power inside. Maybe that's okay for an unimportant item but in an emergency situation I want my lanterns and fans to keep going, not crapping out in a short time.
I'm also buying a 20 watt solar panel with smart charger that plugs into solar panel for recharging these Ds in 4-5 hours. AAs take 3 hours, so maybe Ds will be “done” in that 4-5 hour time.
My electrical engineer relative came for Thanksgiving and he checked my old rechargeables and only three of those could be saved.
I've already bought bunches of Sanyo new AAs that charge 1,500 times and keep their charge a long time - at 75% strength after three years. No memory effect.
I have at least 5 Sterno stoves and enough canned heat to cook - a year. Easy way to cook inside house. Got those Sterno stoves back in 1999.
Guys have all this big stuff to use outside, and that's fine, but when I get up, still in jammies, I want coffee and something fast to warm/cook. A can of canned heat serves that purpose and for warming anything. I don't think guys are much into canned heat, but there is a lot guys don't know. Simple is better than overkill.
You might look at AceMart's web site and look at their prices for bulk sterno.
I've cooked on everything from open fires to the most modern commercial induction ranges (hated those).
Personally, I'll take whatever is available, but coffee needs to be fast and easy in the morning, or someone's getting hurt. ;)
Sterno and my camp coffee pot work just fine for that.
/johnny
Comments:
-For water, consider a cistern and/or rain barrels, particularly if in an area that gets significant rain. The water can be easily purified/boiled/filtered. You’d be surprised how much water is caught on a roof.
I used an LED drop-in and D battery adapters for AA Tenergy rechargeables.
I am now "prepped" as they say with a truly camouflaged flashlight with a much longer battery life.
I don't need any more - have enough for a year. I calculated how long one burned and how long I would need one or two burning at the same time, put that all together, and got enough to last a year.
You're a smart person and a chef and you understand the beauty of canned heat, especially in the morning. I have other ways to cook and the fuel for each, but for simplicity of coffee and heating soup, etc., canned heat is my choice.
When hurricane Rita came through here, power was off and my husband walked outside with his hot coffee and a neighbor lady asked him how he got hot coffee. He told her and brought her a cup and also offered her a can of canned heat and a Sterno Stove and she wouldn't take it because she had never seen one. This lady is a BANKER and she was afraid of canned heat because she didn't know what it was.
Some people you just can't help. She and her son ate cold sandwiches for four days. My husband kept taking her hot coffee every morning.
We were using the canned heat in the morning but for lunch/dinner, we sat under the roof over a patio and cooked nice meals on a propane grill.
We stayed cool using battery fans and could sleep at night through the heat, due to those fans.
I don't know why people around here who know a hurricane may come, do absolutely nothing to prepare until the day before the hurricane gets here, then they take off to the grocery for water and tuna to live on.
When buying rechargeables, remember that the LSD versions are the new break through and is what most of us were looking for, and all of us were looking for, for some applications, but if you have something that you are going to use heavily, and frequently, and will be recharging every month or two anyway, then you may want to use the non-LSD batteris for that, because you can get higher mAh numbers, for instance 2700 mAh AAs instead of 2000s mAh.
People who use their cameras constantly for instance.
You are innovative - drink 10 more bottles of Schlitz and you can light up your house. You could drink more and make flashlights to give to family for Christmas but you'd better let someone else do the cutting of the Christmas wrap paper.
I want LSD. My LSD Sanyo AAs are 2000 mAh. My Ds, the most important of the batteries, are LSD Tenergy 8,000 mAh.
Also, when reading about solar panels and recharging batteries, I found that solar will not totally charge a battery as high as 10,000 mAh. They are even more expensive than the 8,000 plus they are not LSD. There is no point in paying more and the solar panel not charging them totally up to the 10,000 mAh and then they don't hold the charge over time very long.
I researched this thoroughly for days before I decided what was best for my situation. I learned more about batteries and solar chargers than I ever wanted to know.
“For water, consider a cistern and/or rain barrels, particularly if in an area that gets significant rain. The water can be easily purified/boiled/filtered. You’d be surprised how much water is caught on a roof.”
I have a 55 gal. rainwater barrel and two kiddie pools to put on deck to gather rain water. Have a Berkey purifier to purify water.
Have WaterBob for bathtub that is 100 gallons of good water.
Have 30 gallons of Ozarka water in thick stackable jugs.
The rainwater barrel and kiddie pools will be a renewable source.
Also have a 15,000 gallon swimming pool full of water.
Schiltz as a brand is long gone, it went from top of the market to an obscure regional rarity, the flashlight is about 42 years old, my oldest flashlight is about 85 years old.
For people who own old, favorite flashlights, the led drop ins are a great idea.
I converted a Tekna II (a popular 1980s 2-AA dive light)to led, and with rechargeables, it self regulates, with a pretty consistent brightness for at least 30 hours, with who knows how many more hours of usable light, I didn’t want to damage the batteries so I counted 30 hours as sufficent for my personal test.
Since yesterday I have been running a Lightwave 3000 which is a 4 led flashlight from about 2000/2001, old but high quality technology and build for it’s time, with rechargeables, and 22 hours in on the test, it looks good so far, they say that it will produce usable light for 2 weeks with never being turned off.
I don’t know why a solar panel can’t run a battery charger if the power is converted to 110.
By the way, my light is the Lightwave 2000, not the 3000.
With the larger solar panel I'm getting, the AAs will charge in 3 hrs. I'm hoping the Ds will charge in 4-5 hours. I got enough AAs and Ds to always have some charging in order to have enough to immediately replace batteries.
I know guys use generators but I can't do that and fuel runs out for generators, plus they make noise to alert other people. I decided for those reasons, to go with rechargeable batteries and good solar charger so I would always have light.
I also have enough jar candles to light my house at night for - a year.
“I don’t know why a solar panel can’t run a battery charger if the power is converted to 110.”
It will. The solar panel I’m getting has a smart charger with it that plugs into solar panel. Also can be plugged in wall.
I have a fine charger to plug in wall to quickly charge batteries, but need that other smart charger that can plug into solar panel when power is gone.
The charger that comes with the solar panel has a DC male plug to plug into female cigarette type plug attached to the panel.
The fine other charger I have is strickly wall plug.
Yeah I know, I’m the guy that recommended the Tenergys to you, but for general knowledge, other people may want to know that while LSDs are the breakthrough that we have all been waiting for, because the rechageable can sit on the shelf for years and still be usable, that the traditional version of the Nimh is still more practical for some uses.
I would recommend that people stay away from D and C battery devices as much as possible, and try to always buy devices that use AAs if they can.
You are already well invested in D battery lanterns so it made sense for you to make your battery purchase, I envy you, while the Ds are more expensive, they sure carry the juice.
Like you, I don’t like generators, they make so much sense for people, but for me personally, I like long term solutions.
For my batteries I have small solar chargers, cheap versions, that are slow and I can only do 4 at a time, but what I do have, is a battery charger with a car plug, and a solar trickle charger for the car.
In an emergency I can always go out to the car and have years worth of easy battery charging, even without running the engine.
You can also buy an inverter to turn your car into a generator, for as long as the gasoline lasts.
I agree that devices are phasing out Ds and AA will be the major battery in the future but my Ds have so much more power than the AA. I would be changing batteries constantly if I went with the D shell with a AA inside it. I dumped that idea.
I’ve got what you have - a battery charger with a car plug, and a solar trickle charger for the car. I won’t be doing that - I’m not dealing with car batteries. My husband got that stuff. You know your stuff - where do you live? Between my solar panels and what you know about the car stuff, we’d have light.
I also have two cheap box type solar chargers but they are the pits to charge a battery. On the chart of one still in the box, it says it takes from one to two days to charge a D. That’s too long for me and that’s why I’ve gone to the expensive solar panel and charger that comes with it. I just got serious and told myself get this solar panel or shut up and you will not have what you need to keep the lights on.
See, I think it’s about to hit the fan and I’m not messing around any more. I’m making sure I have the right serious preps.
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