Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I live in Houston and am supposed to get my new Vagabond II Portable Power System today--yea!

Had a question--is it okay to use Vagabond II Portable Power System to power a laptop or small fan or fluorescent light in case of power outage? I know you don't advise it to power modeling lights. How about just using the inverter on a car battery to do the same?

I have "fond" memories of a week without power after Hurricane Ike.

It is no problem to run small AC appliances from the VII. However, depending on what you are running, the time available may not be what you are needing (you can't run a fan for a week, for example. You may only get an hour or two, depending on the size of the fan). You can run the inverter off a car battery for longer run times (or a larger capacity deep cycle marine battery, and cables are included for this purpose). The reccomendation for keeping model lamps off is the run time of the battery is greatly diminished, as well as the wattage is too much for the VII to handle (4x 250W bulbs= 1000 watt draw), and can overheat the inverter.

Most excellent! I just received my Vagabond II a few minutes ago and read the instructions stating it can be used in an emergency to power small items. It powers my old White Lightning strobes with no problem--2 second recycle times on FULL power dumps! Thanks for a terrific product!