I have not seen another piece of equipment that will punch the PC680 with 14.7V as it requires. B&C said turn it up, and the Odyssey chart said the same thing. Please tell me what I should replace (or add to) my system with so that the dang PC680 stays charged besides the charger in the hangar?
First, stop using a charger in the hanger. History on this site has shown that that MANY SLA battery failures are related to long-term charger use. SLA's don't need long term charging and the wrong type of charger will insure a short life.
Flew around for about 20 min today - landed with idling voltage around 13.2 or so at shutdown; that changes to about 12.3 overnight.
A good SLA battery will read 12.8 - 13.0 approximately 12 hours after charging or flying. At 12.3, your battery is toast - 45% capacity.
I do not think the current system will cook (overcharge) the PC680, but it will be charged within limits if I fly long enough.
Not sure what you base that opinion on, but this is america and you are welcome to have one and express it.
So: tell me what I should do instead of what I am doing? Note I have a pile of 680s in the shop, and this one seems to be working closer to what it is supposed to do: staying alive.
Stop putting your battery on a charger when not flying, unless it is an odyssey branded charger. An SLA battery will hold about 85% of it's charge over a 6 month period. It has a very low self-discharge rate compared to the flooded lead acid battery in your car.
See:
https://www.odysseybatteries.com/docs/odyssey_battery_charger_manual.pdf
Look to page 9 (the charging rate and voltage) and then tell me what to do besides set the regulator at 14.7V as the Odyssey charger does. It says the battery is full when it has 14.7V...which at that point my ship’s amp meter would show 0 amps (remember I set the regulator at 14.7)...or am I wrong about amps vs volts?
The odyssey charger is a charger and it shuts off once the battery is charged. It then turns itself back to charging mode if the voltage drops. This prevents it from cooking the battery. This does not mean that you should constantly float your battery at that voltage. Auto batteries are also charged around 14.8 volts. Find me an auto manfucturer that uses a regulator with a 14.7 voltage; They all use about 14.3-14.4. If you do more research, you will begin to understand the difference between charging voltage, equalizing voltage and float voltage.
Back in the day, I sold very large phone systems. Customer called one day furious that there battery bank on the UPS only held for 30 minutes during a power outage only a few months after installation. When we investigated, we found that the customer had left the switch on equalize (.4 volts higher than the float) and he had cooked the batteries.
Then again, I could be reading the Odyssey manual wrong...