Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Ok, Here goes...Any help is greatly appreciated. I have the vagabond II battery and haven't used it for some time now....so I had a shoot coming up and charged it the night before. as soon as I plugged it in both green light and red light come on and stayed on solid for full charging time (7hrs)....After I unplugged it I plugged in a one of my alien bees (800) and turned battery on....the green light that supposed to come on goes on for a millisecond and then goes out/shuts off....no power....Is my battery toast from not being charged for awhile or is there something I can do to re-condition my battery? I replaced the fuse to see if that would make a difference but same thing....dang it I really coulda used that battery...but I had to re adjust...anyway thanks again for any insight ....

likely from not using/maintaining the battery. Sealed lead acid batteries (actually, all batteries) will self discharge. SLA's will start to sulfate soon after they loose charge. once this happens, you will lose that capacity to hold a charge. There is no way to reverse the damage (at least no practical way). A replacement battery should get you going.

Pretty much same thing is happening to me. Hadn't used it all winter and went to charge it last night, as soon as I plugged it in the green charging light came on. Left charging through the night and unplugged the charging cord this morning and the green charging light goes out and the red one starts blinking slowly. The green "ready" light comes on for a 1/2 second as well before dimming out.

I plugged in an AB800 while the Vagabond was plugged into an AC outlet and fired off a couple test flashes and even plugged into the AC outlet the Vagabond completely died for a couple seconds.

So I'm guessing a new battery for me as well?

Sounds like it, Especially if not charged before storage.

If you had never charged it up before would that still happen? I have a brand new one that I haven't used yet-purchased at beginning of 2009.

Likely a dead battery. The battery has almost certainly self discharged and the sulfation started some time ago. You can try to charge it and see if it still works, but you will get fewer flashes than normal, if any at all.

I just received a Vagabond II yesterday, did my first shoot with it today. What a great unit!

From the previous posts, it sounds like my best bet is to just leave the Vagabond II plugged into the wall socket at all times, even if I don't use it for six months. Is this correct?

Well, I suppose this would have been OK a few years back to leave it charging 24/7 as I did. Had my Vagabond II since 2007 and it was always plugged in all the time until a few months ago when recent posts from Tech Service suggests this is not the best way to go. I have had no problems with my VBII to date. An over night charge just once a month and right after use is the PCB recommendation. This is what I do now.

RMS

Thanks for your reply! That's the route I'll go.

I'd be interested to hear what Tech Service has to say on this. I'm not sure of the specifics of the VB battery charger but it is possible to overcharge a lead acid battery. If the VB charger doesn't go into a float/maintain mode then you could shorten the battery life by leaving it on charge for long periods of time.