With the advent of quality LED lights I've noticed that I'm buying AAA batteries more than I used to. The same goes for AA. In the past, I would have a drawer full of D cells for flashlights and radios. Now I have a stock of AAA through D with a few 9 volts thrown in as well. If I ever get a Surefire or Inova I'll be looking at 123's too. Has anyone considered sticking to just one size of battery? If so, what size did you choose for your lights, radios, or other emergency/outdoor gadgets?

BTW: I hear that AAA Lithums will be available this year.

Chris

After posting long list of electronics that I use or can bring in survival situation I realized that I must carry (and I did) so many batteries that alone I could have solved blackout problem. So I started to work on standardization. My goal was and is to make everything if not universal at least 2 type of batteries max. So I started with phasing out AAA (but I’m still stuck with my Zipka Headlamp), than I worked on getting special containers that I can use in order to substitute weird lithium with AAs (example my Vertex UHF radio). Right now I’m down to Cr123s and AAs. CR123s are used for my Inova Lights only. Now if all my stuff that uses CR123s failed I can live on AAs because ARC LS with AA module and ARC AA would be my primary lights. Rest of the important stuff is AA only and that includes GPS, Radio, Flashlights (mentioned ARC stuff) and Light Sticks.

I treat things with weird batteries as disposables (photon). I mean I make sure stuff there is fresh and if it fails on the road I switch to backup. No stopping, no breaks. When in times of “peace” I will have time to go and replace the battery. When at “war” stuff gets tossed to the bottom of my pack and backup comes out.


Matt

I decided to go for two sizes. Those sizes are AA and C2032. The AA is used in my GPS, the lights for my bicycle, my flashlight and my Psion. The C2032 is used for the Photon lights and as a backup battery for the Psion. New items are required to comply with the standard.
As required items (e. g. the light for the bicycle) are only available with AA batteries the range for my choice was pretty narrow anyway.

I've run into the very same problem. I try to use AA's as much as possible and keep the AAA's & 9-V to a minimum.
The 123's for my surefire's were all bought at $1.00 to $1.25 each, I looked around and bought the least expensive ones I could find. Those get used very little, just shooting and real emergencies. I can justify paying for them with the low use and great results. Here in California we have Dollar Stores, where everything is $1.00,. I buy all the batteries I can there at $1.00 per 4 pack ( AA, AAA and D's) and 2 pack for 9-V. They do have name brand good quality batteries.
I also find that I'm useing less D cells with good AA flashlights and the Photon lights. I liked the first Surefire so much, I now have 3.

Which Surefires do you own (you mentioned you had 3) ?

I can't decide which Surefire I should buy first 6P or E2e....

I've standardized on AA's and AAA's. Arc AAA and maglites, small AAA radio, my digicam takes AA's. I've decided to not buy anything C or D or coin lithium. I'm going to try rechargebles again and a lot of chargers will work with AA and AAA. Picked up a NiCad/NiMH with 12v auto plug the other day.

Standard carry for me are AA's and CR123A's. I carry but do not rely on a Streamlight stylus which takes AAAA's and I carry a spare set of those also, but this is a daily convenience light not an emergency light for me. My daily carry lights are a SureFire E2 and Inova X5 both using 123A's. I carry the AA's for my Ham Radio pack.

In my replacable battery items I have standardized on AAA & AA. I keep a small tin (everest gum) which just holds 4 AA & 2 AAA batteries. Several tins contain rechargable NiMh, and one tin with disposables. The disposables have a shelf life of 7 years now, but I rotate them yearly. I keep the stack of tins with rechargables handy and grab them when going on extended outings where weight is not an issue.

I also have two small chargers will charge both. One 120vac and one 12vdc. These live in the truck and have proved quite useful. Someday I plan to make a small solar attachment for the DC charger. I have tried several solar chargers and they were poor performers (years ago...are they better now??)

The tin (lined with cardboard to prevent shorting) makes a nice carry. I am lucky to have a friend that likes the gum.

These power mini-mag light, Aurora head light, GPS, Ham Radio, Palm, Infinity led light and much more. Also keep several photon lights, but I do not plan on replacing the batteries in the field.

Been doing this for years and it seems to work for me. I know I could have smaller gear with other batteries, but, I can pick up more just about anywhere in the world that I have traveled. This is a major plus for me.

Nomad

I have it down to AA's.They are for red Infinity task light and white infinity Ultra.There is also the FRS Talkabouts and Remington razor.And for news and music my CD player and Grundig AM,FM,SW radio all take AA's.I dont think I need more than that.
BOATMAN

Have you had any trouble with the NiMH self discharge? I bought some a couple years ago and they would discharge themselves within a couple weeks so I was always having to remember to charge them. I was thinking of trying to NiCads. The ones in my cordless drill seem to do a lot better. Plus the chargers I have all can do either.

I don't, I placed my light and batteries in the SOB enhanced medic bag. It's difficult to standardise.

Almost.
I'm almost to AA only, I'm already at 100% LED lamps, most of my other stuff runs on AA, but I have a few stragglers (a radio and a set of FRS radios) that use AAA and I don't want to replace them just yet.
But with the Lithium cells, I've found that AA's do all that I need. I'm not planning on buying more "D" cells any time soon.

Like Polak187, I try to keep my batteries to CR123s and AAs. I find that things like GPS, Radios, back-up cell phone chargers, maglights, ect usually can be found in AA and high powered flashlights in CR123's. I bet if need be you might even be able to start a vehicle off of those CR123's. <img src="images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

Reference NiMh shelf life. I have found quite a bit of variability in shelf life between brands.

Years ago I called eveready and they said 3%/day discharge. But I know there was a product change and it got much better. Still, not as good as disposable alkaline.

Best so far for me is eveready NH-15 which is a 1850 mah AA battery. Radio shack seems to be far worse. I keep some eveready NH-15's in two FRS radios in the truck and they seem to last a long time (weeks) and are still functional.

Check the eveready site www.energizer.com for spec. sheets. No shelf life given though.

RS batteries fail quickly and I have a big pile of them that have begun to leak. Guess I should run a shelf life test on the NH-15's. If I do, someday, I will post results.

Thanks for the info. I'll pick up a set of the energizer and try them out. The ones I have are Sanyo 1650mAH I bought a couple years ago. They worked well at first, ran my digicam through two 16m cf cards on the same set of batteries. Now I have to swap around just to get the camera to turn on. I didn't treat them as well as I should, the digicam forums all say to keep them together in sets and such, I would just grab the first three that were charged. I got to where I stopped using them in anything else because I feared that they would be dead when I tried to use them.

I have one of the Nitrolon Z-2 that is now EDC, bought a new forearm for my shotgun that has a built in Surefire and I found a good discount on a 6-P. Surefire has a good site and will send a really nice, informative catalog. I just weighed the cost , features and my expected use before I decided. The Nitrolon Z-2 worked well at an MVA the other night.

What about chargers that have an automatic drain-down system before starting to recharge.

Might this help remove the requirement of using consistent pairs of batteries when grabbing recharged ones? If all the batteries you recharge are all drained down to nothing first before recharging, why would it matter if they were not originally paired?

Bountyhunter

Full drains are not real helpful though. Newer battery technologies prefer to be topped opp rather than fully discharged. In the early NiCad days you wanted a charger that could drain before charging but not any more. NiMH and Lion have a limited number for full discharges.

Fwiw, the AccuManager 2020 charges AAA -> D cells, plus 9V, and understands NiCad, Nimh and rechargable alkaline. It's about fifty bucks, works nicely off 12V or mains and has some very funky battery reconditioning tech: I don't know what it does, but it's taken cells I thought were dead and brought them back to full service.

I gave up on complete standardization: I figure that having a range of sizes is actually a plus, for when you come across either unfamiliar equipment which needs feeding, or can only find some sizes in the store. I have one set of everything which runs on AAA, and another set which runs on AA.

I tried to standardize on AA's only, mainly because of the advantages of the lithium cells--light weight, long shelf life, large storage capacity (relatively). Unfortunately, two essential items in my kits take AAA's only...my Tikka/Zipka's and my Sony FM/AM/TV/Weather radio. I really wish that the manufacturers of this kind of equipment would realize that the vastly greater power capacity of the AA's over the AAA's makes the AAA cell rather useless in comparison.

For example, an Energizer AA is rated at about 2850mAh versus 1250mAh for an Engergizer AAA. That means a AA packs about 2.28 times as much energy as a AAA!

It should also be mentioned that I try not to rely too much on battery powered devices. You can only carry so many batteries. But here's what I do have:

AA's
2ea Motorola Talkabout 6250 GMRS/FRS radios (and an FCC license, to boot)
1ea Sony ICF-SW7600G shortwave radio
various lights (CMG's, Mag's)

AAA's
1ea Petzl Zipka (and/or Tikka, I have one of each)
1ea Sony SRF-M37V FM/AM/TV/Weather radio

At least, that's the important stuff--but then, of course, there's the cell phone (proprietary Li-Ion) and the Photon's (lithium coin cells); however, in the first case, I don't expect the cell phone to last longer than a day, and in the other, the coin cells are small and light enough not to be a bother.

Energizer is due out with 1.5 volt Lithium AAAs sometime this year - I don't think they are out yet "...later in 2004..." I imagine that they will be about $1.00 US each from discount battery suppliers on the web (just a guess). Perhaps someone else has more information...?

Tom

just a thought, do you guys recommend a specific battery brand of type?
such as energizer, nicad..etc

and does anyone order batteries in bulk?

NiMh AA batteries now come in 2100 mah. I get mine from either Sams Club or Wal-Mart. These are Eveready brand. Seems like the shelf life has also gotten better. I put a number sticker on each battery and have been checking their shelf life and now find a 2 week cycle is OK. Probably longer, but 2 weeks works for me.

I keep Lithium batteries in our back-up ham radios which we carry in our hiking packs. The weight reduction is significant. If we indend to use the radios, we change to NiMh, reserving the LIthium for emergency use only.

Just threw out a whole bunch of Radio Shack Batteries. They are expensive, low power and althought I have been charging them in only the high end microprocesor Radio Shack Charger, they all have developed leaks. I would recommend staying away from Radio Shack NiMh Batteries. I took a bunch into a store to see if there was any guarantee and was told that there was none. Junked over $100 worth of them.

Nomad

I've been buying the Ray-O-Vac bulk packs that Lowes and Home Depot have on sale. They seem to work fine to me.

Something to note, Lithium AAA's are coming out sometime this year. I keep some AAA devices for EDC due to the smaller size (Arc AAA, Mag-lite AAA's)
When I was looking for a new cell phone last fall, I started looking for something similar to the old Motorola flipphones with the external removable battery. I found Samsung makes some like that, I got a B/W screen, no camera, removable battery flip phone that is digital and analog capable. Then bought a desktop charger like the old Motorola's and spare battery and car charger and stuck an extra jack in the door pocket of my truck so the charger is always there and always plugged in. This was I always have a spare battery as well as a charged phone since I simply drop it in the charger when I take it off my belt.

I recommend Energizers. Mainly because Energizer offers Lithium AA's, but also because they publish the technical specs of their batteries, including capacity and discharge curves. It's nice to know what your buying.

An interesting note--when the e2's originally hit the market, they carried the same mAh ratings as the regular Energizers. Checking the site now, I see that the ratings of the e2's have been bumped up. 3135mAh v. 2850mAh for a AA (10% more). Of course, the Lithium AA's are rated at 2900mAh, but that's at a constant 200mA drain, as opposed to a 25mA drain for the alkalines...

Lithiums are much better in high-drain devices. They may not last any longer than alkalines in low-drain devices, but they sure do weigh a lot less and have better shelf life, and for survival gear, that's a very good thing.

thanks for the help, ijust checked out those sites and home depots has the best price of energizer AA 24 pk for $10.69, and a 12 pk of C for $9.98.

if anyone can top these deals let me know.
now i need a good battery charger...grumble..