My newly wed wife and I are currently living in an apartment. Building in the office is pain enough as is but the thought of having to leave a car battery sitting in the floor all the time to power my charger just seems.... well.... gaudy. (sp?)

So I was looking for an DC power supply to power the little sucker. This is what I have found:

Ebay Item - Pyramid Power Supply

The Triton requires between 10-15V and 5A to charge. Or so it seems at Great Planes Website . So I think that this would probably work with a 13.8V output at 5A continuous.

Anyone that knows a good amount about power, please jump in here. I'm not die hard on that charger either so other suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks!

Klint.

(forgot to mention - I will likely be charging mostly 8 cell packs - be it NIMH or Li-Poly)

After looking around in the Orbit Pro Thread I was able to dig up the Radical RC website. He offers quite a few power supplies for DC chargers. I thought that the pyramid may be cool since it had the lighter attachment right on the front - but one of these would work as well.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated for this relatively newb to electric. I'm outfitting my first REAL electric plane and thus require a serious charger and batteries to accompany it. Thanks again.

Klint

5A is not much, unless you're only charging small packs. A 20 or 25A power supply, such as those posted in this forum many times already, will suffice.
..a

Thanks Andy and my apologies for the redundacy.

K2

I have the Triton also and it requires a 13 amp power supply as its manual states. Make sure its 13 amps continuous and not peak or surge! I'm using an Astron RS-35A, 25 amps continuous, 35 surge. They sell a 15 amp continuous. I had mine from ham radio. Pyramid is a good make, but get at least 13 amps.

Mike in OR

13 amps is only required if you intend to charge packs with greater than 10 cells. The power supply mentioned, 13.8 volts @ 5A should be more than adequate for the intended 8 cells. The higher current (13A) is required only for high cell counts because the Triton's internal DC to DC converter needs it when supplying voltages greater than the incoming supply voltage - 10 to 15 volts.

Try Radio shack...I bought mine for ~$69

I use the Pyramid PS15KX with my Triton, which is rated at 10A (12A peak). I've had it for 3 months and had no problems. I use it to charge LiPo's and 6-7 cell NiMH packs.

I am using a Pyramid 10 amp 13 volt PS for my Trition, and it works perfictly.

Here's the real skinny: Any 12V regulated power supply will work fine. I regularly use a 3A, 12V Radio Shack power supply with my chargers, for example.

Current ratings come into play when you decide on what packs you're going to charge. Here's my now-slightly-famous, and recently simplified, formula for determining how large a power supply you need:

Amp Rating = # of cells * charge rate / 6

Example: 25 cells at 5 Amps = 21 Amp power supply

Originally posted by mkirsch1
Example: 25 cells at 5 Amps = 21 Amp power supply

It would be a waste of money to buy a 21 amp power supply to power a Triton charger. Here's what the owner's manual says at the bottom of page 5:

To achieve Triton’s maximum potential, the power source must be capable of delivering at least 13 amps of current while maintaining 12 volts DC.

Your formula seems to work okay though. The "Operating Characteristics of the Triton Charger" table located toward the end of the manual states that at 30 volts, which is the nominal voltage of 25 cells, the charge rate at the 5 amp setting is reduced to 3 amps. If you use 3 amps instead of 5 amps in your formula, you get 25 * 3/6 = 12.5 amps, which is in good agreement with the manual's figure of 13 amps.

Just to add a bit of additional info for everyone's digestion, I did an experiment. I dialed down the output current of my power supply to 5 amps while maintaining an output voltage of 13.5. I then did a few discharge/charge cycles on an 8-cell, 1800 mAh, AA battery pack. During charging at 1.8 amps, at no time did the Triton draw more than 2.1 amps. I do not have any 10-cell packs so was not able to try the Triton with that cell count.