Re: Celestron Power Tank

Len Philpot wrote:
On Fri, 08 Sep 2006 02:00:30 GMT, Terry A Haimann wrote:


I have a Celestron Power Tank 17. It's not recharging after my last
camping trip(None of the lights come on.) I tried replacing the fuse, but
it is still not working. Any idea as to what could be wrong?


I didn't see the original article, but I, too have a PT17. My cheers go
out to Celestron (for their patience with me) and my jeers go to the
original power supply / charger manufacturer (for their low quality)...
I went through two complete units and either four or five power supplies
before I finally got one that (so far, fingers crossed) appears to work
without burning itself up.

All of the previous chargers would charge the unit once and then put out
no more than ~0.5 VDC subsequently. That happened on both "master"
units, so it wasn't a defect in one of them. Celestron kept sending me
charger after charger over about a 9 month period. This was after
Astronomics stood (hid?) behind their 30-day return policy and refused
to play. In all fairness they offered to take it back right up front
(before the root problem was determined), but only with shipping at my
expense (and a PT17 is /heavy/). At least Celestron split the shipping
with me on the replacement master unit. It got to the point where their
customer support guys knew I was calling before I gave them my name...
:-)

So, bottom line may be that you have a blown charger. Look for about an
18VDC, 800ma or so replacement (according to what Celestron told me). I
even used a little 12VDC 300ma charger just to prevent battery damage
from its long-term discharged state - Took a while to charge, but it got
mostly there.


You have to remember, these bricks or whatever people call then these days, are manufactured not to spec, but for to fit a general purpose and Celestron simply picks them out and order their name be printed on them. They're as guilty as the manufacturer of these terrible things.
.

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