I have had my Hipers for about 6 years. I have never worked them in the weather we are currently experiencing. 15 degress this morning with a wind chill of around zero.
My base was giving me fits. It would just shut off after about 15 minutes, I would warm it up in the truck and restart it and get another 15 minutes out of it and do it all over.
Now I enjoyed the warm up myself, but it took 4 hours to do a 1 hour job.
The Rover and controller were just fine.
Never had a bit of trouble out of any part of this system.
I know they are designed to work in a lot worse than this, but thankfully we do not get this cold but every decade or so.
Any of you cold winter guys ever experience this?
Thanks,
Randy
Randy,
It sounds like your batteries may be showing their age. My base unit does something very similar, however it does last longer than 15 minutes.
The coldest I have ever used them was low 20's.
I run my base off of an external battery when it is cold. There is an aftermarket battery replacement that you can do yourself for about $130 a receiver.
Jimmy
> I have had my Hipers for about 6 years. I have never worked them in the weather we are currently experiencing. 15 degress this morning with a wind chill of around zero.
>
> My base was giving me fits. It would just shut off after about 15 minutes, I would warm it up in the truck and restart it and get another 15 minutes out of it and do it all over.
>
> Now I enjoyed the warm up myself, but it took 4 hours to do a 1 hour job.
>
> The Rover and controller were just fine.
>
> Never had a bit of trouble out of any part of this system.
>
> I know they are designed to work in a lot worse than this, but thankfully we do not get this cold but every decade or so.
>
> Any of you cold winter guys ever experience this?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Randy
I too think this sounds like a battery gone bad.
You can use any 12v battery you like...we have something like a car battery we use for our base.
I vote poor batteries. New batts will give you new life.
N
I don't know if this could have anything to do with it but the HiPer receivers have two battery sticks, one on either side of the receiver.
If a receiver is allowed to stay on and completely discharge the batteries, sometimes when you connect the receiver to the charger, only the battery with the highest voltage will be "seen" by the charging management system. So only one battery gets charged. The receiver will appear to work normally but will run for a much shorter period of time before the battery is depleted.
To overcome this issue, you need to hook the receiver up to the computer and go into the configuration settings and see what the charge state of the batteries is. If one is greyed out and is much lower than the other, that is symptomatic of this problem. To get past this, simply tell the receiver to charge the depleted battery first and that should bring it back to life.
All that said, if you have never replaced the batteries in your HiPers, it is probably time.
The age sounds like it's a battery issue to me also. We change ours out around five years but we track the battery using PCCDU and a spreadsheet. Our test consists of letting the units run all day (with antenna attached) in the office and recording the drop.
This (graphic) is on new batteries and our old ones would deteriorate about the same and then just drop dramatically. You might hook up PCCDU and give yours this same test and compare the voltages.
Deral
Hiper Lites and cold weather
My votes with the battery. I just always hook a 12v battery up as a matter of practice (most of my work I can at least get a four wheeler to) I was having fits in Nunam Iqua last winter, dang base would die, then the rover arggh. Techy told me, "they ain't SUPPOSED to work @ 40 below! Suits me fine, I'll stay inside!
-JD-
