Portable Powerpacks?

[JimBuck]

I am in the market for one of these and I feel like they would be a good investment to have both during ice and open water. Does anyone have any experience with these? They typically run off a sealed battery and include jumping capability, ac/dc power/inverter, light, radio, compressor etc.

Are they worth the money?

[Whopper Stopper]

This should be interesting.

At my work we have a couple of these for jumping trucks, swingers chippers, whatever. I do not know the brand names of the ones we have but I do know one came from Northern and my boss typically does not buy junk. I have yet to see the packs start anything. Either they don't have the power or they weren't plugged in long enough. At any rate I don't think much of them. I always head for the jumpers. My Brother-in-law bought what he was told was a good one from Sears in early fall. He on two occasions needed to use the jump-start feature and neither time did it have enough snap to do the job.

Don't let what I am saying deter you. My experiences with them could just be a fluke! Good luck!

WS

[jeffreyd]

If you keep it charged up, allow the battery to deplete from time to time, and dont want to carry it very far. We had a couple from the local parts house that got used a ton, the biggest issue was they never would get fully charged after use. so when you really needed it, it was too low or dead. they would be great to keep around if you could cycle it to keep the memory charge off of it. good luck

[Macgyver55]

We use them at work all the time to start our diesels when they wont go. Will even crank a dual battery diesel truck pretty well.

Probably not a fair comparison to what you might get for fishing though. The ones we use have dual batteries, put out 1200 amps and cost nearly 400 bucks.

I do however have a cheap Century brand 1000 amp at home that has performed to my expectations for several years. I think it ran 70 bucks or so new. They are designed for bursts of amperage though and I've never tried using it with a long term draw on it. I dont know how it would hold up for that.

[Northlander]

Get one that you can both wall charge and also charge off your cig lighter in your vehicle. Oh and dont forget it at home like I did mine this weekend.

[cold one sd]

I have one that has a compressor, 12v outlets,110v outlets, can be charged by my truck 12v power port, charged by 110v outlet and has 1,100 amps for jump starting. It can also be left plugged into a 110v outlet all the time as it has a maintenance charger built in.

[deadeye]

I like the Schumacher brand. I have two of them that get used for jumping the cars and as a power source camping, fishing ect.

What sold me on the Schumacher ones is that you just plug a extention cord into it to charge it. There is no charger to loose. Those century ones are the cats meow but as mentioned they are expensive. The big schumacher ones I got were about 60$ or so if I remember right.

[JimBuck]

Thanks for the responses guys. They sound like a nice option for portable power.

Hey deadeye, any clues on where I could find a schumacher in the metro?

[Glockwinger]

I have one that goes on the pontoon in the summer and in the wheelhouse in the winter. I have used it to jump the truck after it sat out on the lake and wouldn't start while ice fishing, and also use it to charge the cell phone while fishing or to plug the ipod in on the pontoon. Lots of portable power options.

[mrjigger]

does anyone use these to power your 12V lights, TV/DVD, etc. in your perm house?

I bought one recently that claims it will run a TV/VCR for 21 hours. Yes....21 hours. Seems far fetched, but thought I would give it a try.

[cold one sd]

I haven't used mine in my wheel house, but a while back our power was out and I used it so my wife could watch TV.

[DTro]

very good write-up here

http://www.hotspotoutdoors.com/forum/ubb...att#Post2112408