I start­ed this last night, but was so tired, I just could­n’t fin­ish it…

Bat­ter­ies: This is a sim­ple one, right?  Every­one thinks so.  Heck, I think so.  I sort of pride myself on keep­ing on top of things even if I let them slip.  Well, I let them slip.  It was my first week­end of spring camp­ing.  In my leisure time while camp­ing, I got the chance to start read­ing M.D. Creek­more’s new book Dirt-Cheap Sur­vival Retreat, One Man’s Solu­tion.  I’ll review that one in a few days.  Back to the post at hand…  In my truck, I keep a cou­ple of flash­lights.  A Maglite and one of those 9 LED lamp flash­lights that runs on three “triple A” bat­ter­ies.  I pret­ty much take them for grant­ed because they are there.  I use them on camp­ing trips, and hon­est­ly, have not changed the bat­ter­ies in a cou­ple of years. i.e. I reit­er­ate, I take them for grant­ed.

As stat­ed, I was out on my first spring camp­ing trip… It was a last minute deci­sion to go, and I was nowhere near home.  I knew I had just enough gear in my truck, and hey, I was­n’t wor­ried about a thing.  Then it hap­pened.  It got dark.  Hmm.  Off to the truck to pull out the Maglite.  Click when the switch, and no light came out.  Hmmm… Dead bat­ter­ies.  Not to wor­ry, I have a 9 LED flash­light.  That’ll work.  Well, nope, it did­n’t work.  I end­ed up using the lit­tle emer­gency LED EDC flash­light on my keyring all week­end.  I could have jumped in the truck to head to the store sev­er­al miles away, but I thought it a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to see if I could get by.

Now, the les­son?  No mat­ter how good you think your bat­ter­ies are going to per­form, change them.  Change them once a year.  Had I done this, both my flash­lights would have worked fine.

Now, that said, What bat­ter­ies do you use?  How do you store them for the long term?  Which bat­ter­ies are best to use?  Based on my research, this is what I found out about bat­ter­ies…

Here is some inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about bat­ter­ies for stor­age:

• NiCad (Recharge­able):
  • http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv014.cgi?read=58708
  • http://www.greenbatteries.com/nibafa.html#NiCd vs NiMH
  • http://www.ehow.com/how_7421668_store-nicad-batteries.html
• Bat­tery Uni­ver­si­ty:
  • http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batteries

How often do you change your bat­ter­ies?