Jump start pack

I'm still an EarthX fan, The 12-volt Jump Pack has served me well for about five years now. Of course, I admit to blowing the fuse a couple of times, but that was pilot error.

Now, when it comes to the EarthX batteries it's a slightly different story. My ETX-900 started acting up in year four, although their web site says they "should be" good for eight years. I would have hoped to get more life out of a $600 battery but maybe I just got a lemon. I'm still committed to the lithium concept and have ordered another ETX-900. Fool me once ..... etc. But I'm hoping for a different outcome this time.

Their customer service is superb, in my experience.

The XP-1 for 12 volt. There's one out there called a Goliath that works well if you need 24 volt.

Web

My local battery shop is nuts for Noco jump packs. After hooking it up you turn it on and wait for a click from an internal switch. That’s different but simple enough. Mine takes longer to charge than my Jump Packs and the carry bag leaves room for improvement but the battery works well.

You guys and fuses. What the hell? I’ve had three Jump packs (still have three but can only find two!) and have used them a lot for cars, boats, and wheelers. I’ve never blown a fuse. Heck, until this thread I didn’t know they had a fuse!

The fuse,
I use the JP to power projects up in the shop as well as starting vehicles, If I recall a tool or material got in where it did not belong, One of my workers did that one such that I do not know exactly what happened, he does not either.
Myself, I was hooking up to a battery working in the dark and the ground side got over to the positive as I was clamping the Pos to the terminal. I will say the fuse was mighty fast acting. Not much of an arc as when starting a big ole lead acid battery.

Last winter I did a three week trip to TX. Got home to AK at the usual 2:00 AM and -15°. My commuter, a Subaru Outback, had a end-of-life battery when I parked it. Totally dead when I got back. Nothing lit up or chirped when I opened the door. Ruh roh! My EarthX Jump Pack fired it right up. It’s moments like that that make loyal customers. Jump Packs are amazing.

stewartb said:

My local battery shop is nuts for Noco jump packs. After hooking it up you turn it on and wait for a click from an internal switch. That’s different but simple enough. Mine takes longer to charge than my Jump Packs and the carry bag leaves room for improvement but the battery works well.

You guys and fuses. What the hell? I’ve had three Jump packs (still have three but can only find two!) and have used them a lot for cars, boats, and wheelers. I’ve never blown a fuse. Heck, until this thread I didn’t know they had a fuse!

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I too can vouch for the Noco, had one for a couple of years and it still holds remarkable charge for the level of neglect it has suffered (leaving it without topping it up etc).

Anyone use this? I also want to use it to power my nonelectric J4 radio and pad. 30000 ma sounds impressive?

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gooloo-P...2xQCHTeD4bJHwY7z6mAaAsiGEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Glenn

stewartb said:

My EarthX Jump Pack fired it right up. It’s moments like that that make loyal customers. Jump Packs are amazing.

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That has been my experience with the EX as well. Even starts my Kubota tractor in the winter which had no battery in it, more than once.
How do you feel the Noco is to the EX in cold weather?
Other packs I have been around were not impressive. Not worth a 20 spot and they cost many times that. I would go back to carrying a PC680 again which we know is not real light.

So, question, and comment:

Question - what kind of breaker is good enough to allow starter current, yet protect from short circuit?

Comment: Currently using EarthX ETX-680C in a J3 and a J4 for com radio. So far so good. J4 has a selectable voltmeter on the instrument panel (strongly recommended) and one J3 is getting same this week. EarthX hits 12.4 V, and it comes out for charge.

Starters are currently using Odyssey 545 and 680. The 680 is older and has been mis-treated. We get 50-70 starts out of the 545 between charges (two B&Cs) and maybe 20 out of the 680 (Sky Tek). I will try the EarthX on a B&C soon. We did get the “Optimate” charger.

Just don’t know enough about the EarthX yet to use it in multiple high current operations. All charging is done away from the aircraft for now.

CharlieN said:

That has been my experience with the EX as well. Even starts my Kubota tractor in the winter which had no battery in it, more than once.
How do you feel the Noco is to the EX in cold weather?
Other packs I have been around were not impressive. Not worth a 20 spot and they cost many times that. I would go back to carrying a PC680 again which we know is not real light.

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My only long duration experience in cold temps is with my Yamaha snowgo and that sucked the juice out of an ETX Jump
pack and my NOCO. I can’t sat either was more impressive since the engine refused to start. That’ll be an early winter chore, dragging the Yami into town and into a shop to fix it. That’s my first Yamaha problem in a lot of years with the blue. Probably something simple for a pro. I ain’t that guy.

As a baseline will that Snowgo fire up now, as in before the cold sets in? Hard to base a judgement when there is some other issue, as you started.
My starting my Kubota tractor had become a habit, heck that and our lawn tractor did not even have a battery in them, well the lawn tractor does since it utilizes an electric clutch.
Sometimes I wonder if routinely starting the Kubota was the demise of my jump pack, but I think it has an issue other than the cells. I am unhappy that the company just refuses to service or sell a product that did them well. There excuse is Chinese competition. Being, "if I am correct" their components are made in China, the Chinese are obviously going to improve there product therefore killing sales of more expensive products.
Having looked at online reviews of the 28650 battery cell used in jump packs and many other devices or vehicle batteries now, the Chinese made ones do not show up well in testing.

Anyone found a small one for 28v that costs less than $250?

The new EarthX Jump Pack is 12/24 volt at $289. https://earthxbatteries.com/shop/earthx-jump-pack

Charlie, no, the sled won’t start and now the starter may be fried from trying. It all results from me changing a battery, which requires removing the triple carbs. I can’t find an error but clearly one exists. I’ll tug it to the trailer in winter. Pretty easy to do. Better tools and working conditions in the hangar.

FWIW: We ebikers prefer Japanese and Korean battery cells, of any type. And beware of counterfeits, labeled Panasonic for instance, but actually Chinese. It takes a battery geek to astertain the difference. Best solution is to buy anything battery
from a well known supplier, not some no name cheapest Alibaba type.

There are a few online comparisons of battery cells. Some of the cells I have had here for years and are not impressed with were covered in one of the comparison tests, and they were considered to be crap. I agree.

I have two Micro Start jump packs (XP-1 and XP-10HD) and a NOCO GB50. It sure would be nice to combine the features between the two companies. Then you would have a real nice jump pack.

The Micro Start packs have three output schemes, 5V, 12V and 19V. They come with every adapter imaginable. I use the 5V and 12V port on a regular basis. The 19V is for charging laptops which I have never used until this year when I discovered that it will charge my Berkley Marine batter that runs my electric fishing reel. That was a big plus at the time. It always surprises me what the outputs that come will Micro Starts will charge.

The battery capacity of the Micro Starts seem to be reasonable and I have never had any issues in the rare moment that I use it to jump stuff.

The down side of the Micro Start is the input charging scheme. The XP-1 and the XP-10 take different power supplies. How stupid is that. Also the clip lead for XP-1 and the XP-10HD are not compatible. Additionally, the XP-10HD are massive and silly clumsy to attach to an under seat battery install. I would buy standard XP-10 over the HD version as their attempt to add capability to the HD is a miserable failure at least from the standpoint of an aircraft owner.

The NOCO-GB50 has a 5V out and 5V in port and that's it. On the extreme plus side is the 5V in for it's charging port. At first I though it quite slow but then I hooked it up to my packable solar panel that goes everywhere with me. That's a real plus to be able to use it the charge my jump pack since most all packable light weight solar panels only give you 5V USB out to charge stuff. The most appreciated part about the GB50 is the clip design. It latches right to the small terminal blocks that come with typical aircraft batteries. As far as overall capacity for charging devices I would put it closer to the XP-1 than the XP-10HD.

The override features are different between the Micro Start and the NOCO. The Micro Start override is in the dongle on it's clip leads and is a timed circuit. I think it's duration is either 30 or 60 seconds. The NOCO's override is internal to the pack and is full on till it kills your pack. As in there are no safe guards in this mode. This is real handy for some things but keep that in mind if you hook it up to say an air pump or just do repetitive jumps. If you push it your internal lipo packs will fall right through the safe discharge threshold and your pack will go from hero to zero rapidly just as the published discharge curves on this chemistry show.

A combination of the features between these two brands would be a worthy contender in the jump pack arena.

Jerry

Thank you for this,
When I got out to OSH in 2017 my tablet battery had gone flat on the flight out. I had my brand new EX jump pack with me so when calling it quit for the night I plugged the tablet into the jump pack. In the morning I go to start the tablet, it had a little power in it while the jump pack was flat.
Once things got going for the day I went over to EX booth and queried him about this. His answer, you can charge phones but the tablet battery is larger than the jump pack's.
The EX pack has been a great tool but I feel mine died early and I wish they had the cells to rebuild it or a new 12V unit available.

Interesting about the solar panel voltage. I have a portable solar panel but never have used it. FWIW the new Jump Pack requires 15v in.

The new unit is rated at 800a at 12v. How does that compare to the old one?

I found my Jump Packs to be really poor at recharging cell phone, sat phone, and the Inreach. If I recall correctly Cubflier made a post a year or two ago explaining why.

The charge density of LiFe is in general lower that the other Li chemistries. Many upsides to LiFe in the aircraft word, but it takes more of it than you will see packaged in something as small as the Earth X pack to charge the communication devices we enjoy.

Jerry

FWIW Earth X answered my question about new vs old for capacity. The old one was 2.2Ah, the new one is 7.8Ah.

Something else that I hadn't heard of from EarthX. A battery for 28v airplanes. https://earthxbatteries.com/shop/etx900-24

The EarthX powersport batteries look like a great way to save weight. I love my Nocos. Keep on in the car, one in my boat pack and one in my tote bag.

In a couple of days we head down country for our dentist appointments, a 7hr round trip, it was raining pretty hard all day. We drive my 50YO little sedan on these trips. The car has a 16YO PC680 in it and my wife left the headlights on when we got there. Driving rain and had to wit in the car due to Covid was the distraction. Oh was I happy for the EX pack, that 680 was flat. But is still in the car for our upcoming rainy trip.

I bought a new Jump Pack. Definitely bigger and heavier. Two outputs are blended into one in parallel and series for 12v or 24v. Very elementary setup. The USB isn’t impressive for charging an iPad. That’s a little disappointing but not important to me. If I’m stuck in the boonies I’ll be happy to have more backup power but I won’t carry it in my day pack. This one will ride in whatever vehicle I’m using.

Edit- It did charge a totally dead full size iPad Pro to 100% in 7 hours and the battery is still at full power.

stewartb said:

Something else that I hadn't heard of from EarthX. A battery for 28v airplanes. https://earthxbatteries.com/shop/etx900-24

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I sooo wish this wasn't an experimental battery. Batteries for the turbines are tanks! and here in the desert, flooded batteries are lucky to make it 2 years

stewartb said:

I bought a new Jump Pack. Definitely bigger and heavier.

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I do not recognize this one, got name and info on it?

EarthX. Their new Jump Pack is the size of 4 of their old ones stacked on each other. A fully charged new Jump Pack charged 2 iPads and an iPhone before it showed signs of needing a charge and it may have had the reserves to start an engine. Not sure yet. It charges devices more slowly than I’m used to but it had the oomph to do it. That’s a win. Much more testing to do but it seems like 4x the size probably equates to 4x the power.

I opened up my "dead" EarthX jump pack to see what is up inside. Having put a meter on the output it still shows 13.5V. The work light functions fine, The charge indicator is 4 lights and it charges back to 5 lights, kind of looses that level in time.
So it measures 13.5 but will not light up a 100W halogen bulb. If I recall that 13.5 is down from what this was a few years back.

Upon opening, all looked fine. But the time it was open one of the "bags", the 4 cells grew to twice it's original thickness.

I would truly like to know what the company knows about cell failures before I buy from them again.

Are you saying the cells swelled after opening? You can check each cell voltage. Ever failure I have observed in series LFP cell packs happens to a single cell, regardless of how the internal configuration is. If you get to the point of giving up on that jump pack I am interested in it's circuit board and would be happy to pay the shipping to AK. Also, can you post some photos of it's internals.

Jerry

This is a single cell failure. The pack ceased operation back in the spring. I would say this had strong pressure against the case which became very noticeable in short time. I will open it up in a short while and take a few shots. Basically need to pull the circuit board off again.