I have a Mark III, LR version with the little 6 volt gel cell in it.
I charged it up well last fall with a trickle/sensor charger so as to not cook it, and before the weather went cold here in Wisconsin put it up on my shed roof, with solar panel maximized for perpendicular to the sun during the winter. I'm at just about 45 latitude.
About two months later it died. Of course we had near constant clouds for the time, or only sun shine when it was late in the afternoon and only exposure was through the trees to the west of the shed.
During the winter IF it was really sunny I might have gotten a few minutes to an hour's worth of transmissions, and would go quiet until the next day, if it was sunny.
As the sun angle and length of day has increased, the little gizmo is working more like advertised, but with only a little extra juice accumulated to last through the night and into the next day but die if there was no sun that next day. An improvement, and it is getting some charge built up.
My question is.... should the natural charging action of the solar panel finally recover the battery, or am I guaranteed another trip to the top of the shed before next fall?
Is this a sign of a battery problem?
Is this a sign the panel isn't up to snuff? What sort of voltage should the diagnostic page be showing when the panel is in bright sun?
Is there more to the circuit to keep the battery up? In other words, could it be partially functioning but some bad or weak component on board be inhibiting it from doing full charge?
Just curious if anyone else has had a problem with the battery. This is the first one that has done this.
Dale