Rechargeable Lithium AA batteries are noisy demonstration on AM mediumwave with Sangean ATS-909X

[00:00:07]So, this is medium wave, 1210. This is WPHD out in Philadelphia, I believe. And um you know, it's it's I'm I'm receiving it on medium wave.

[00:00:22]Just with just with the D internal ferrite antenna.

[00:00:28]And I am using and uh with the batteries, the uh batteries that I'm using are um NiMH nickel metal hydride Amazon Basics rechargeables.

[00:00:43]So, you see how good the reception was.

[00:00:46]But we're going to do an experiment here. And uh something that I was quite surprised to see happen uh with the um with the radio. So, I have a hard time getting the batteries off here.

[00:01:03]There we go.

[00:01:05]And uh let me just take this off. Take this one off.

[00:01:10]And so, for NiMH batteries that are in the Sangean.

[00:01:16]And now I've got the track atom, which are different technology.

[00:01:21]They are lithium batteries.

[00:01:26]And that is very interesting because you'll notice that there is going to be a difference in the receive.

[00:01:35]So, at first I thought these batteries were very quiet because I put them in the shortwave part of the spectrum.

[00:01:42]And everything was fine.

[00:01:46]And of course, I uh then decided to put these batteries because, you know, you want to use these batteries to uh have a good run.

[00:02:02]And you never thought that batteries could do interference or RFI in a radio?

[00:02:07]Of course not.

[00:02:08]So, let's turn the radio back on.

[00:02:12]Here, so I just locked it. And here we go.

[00:02:16]And suddenly, look at the signal indicator.

[00:02:23]It's totally totally washed out.

[00:02:27]I cannot pretty much listen to anything except Let's say CJAD here.

[00:02:34]Even the strong CJAD out in Montreal.

[00:02:40]Traffic station, 7:30.

[00:02:44]Barely audible.

[00:02:51]Barely audible.

[00:02:53]As you could see, now I don't hear anything.

[00:02:58]And so, let's do that change again.

[00:03:03]I'm going to remove the Drac item.

[00:03:07]And put back the uh NiMH batteries from the rechargeable batteries uh that I had before.

[00:03:20]And so, I had seen on many uh comments, and actually one of the followers here, Brian Leissner, had talked about noise from uh coming out of his uh lithium ion batteries.

[00:03:36]And it seems that the ones he had might have been doing noise in a different frequency range.

[00:03:43]But now that I'm back with NiMH, So, now it's back to normal.

[00:03:57]So, this is the find. That is interesting. And you might think, why do lithium batteries create this noise?

[00:04:07]Batteries are batteries, right?

[00:04:09]Actually, lithium technology does not produce 1.5 volts.

[00:04:15]>> [snorts] >> Lithium technology produces 3.7 volts.

[00:04:20]So, in order for these batteries to have 1.5 volts, they need a regular regulator circuit.

[00:04:30]And that regulator circuit is what's making that noise.

[00:04:34]So, it means that for radio purposes, unless there's some miracle lithium battery out there, you might have to stay away from lithium batteries, 1.5 volt AA lithium batteries, in order to power radios.

[00:04:52]Once again, it's not everywhere. If I go to shortwave using these, I actually listen to shortwave without any issues.

[00:04:59]So, these seem to be doing noise really in the lower frequency range. Actually, I want to test where exactly. So, what I'm going to do is probably tune this radio in the lower part of shortwave, you know, like in the 160 meter band, see if they make noise. Where does the noise stop? Is it Does it stop at a certain frequency? Or is it slowly gradually going down?

[00:05:23]But, uh this is a very interesting find.

[00:05:26]And so, that means that uh for radio usage, uh either you use alkaline, you know, standard alkaline, or the good old NiMH rechargeables. And the reason those don't make noise is because they produce 1.2 volts naturally. They have no regulators. They don't need to have a circuit to control anything. They're just um out of the box, the technology, the chemistry of the battery produces 1.2 volts.

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