I picked up a 5AH battery and a charge controller from All Electronics to assemble an emergency backup power supply for my VX-170 HT, and when I tested it was surprised at what happened...
According to the manual for the HT, standby current was 20.5 ma (in saver mode), so I figured a drain of 20.5 maH on a 5AH battery should last about 11 days. So after I charged up the battery and put the HT on it (just on saver mode), imagine my surprise when it drained the battery in a day.
Turns out that with the battery pack installed, and even with the battery pack fully charged, having the battery pack in the HT increased the current drain to nearly 200 ma, giving me my 25 hour life!
I've now pulled the battery pack and just run the HT off the SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) battery, and so far the voltage on the battery is holding up much, much better.
In an actual emergency, I expect the the drain to go faster, and have budgeted 20 minutes per hour of standby, 30 minutes of reception, and 10 minutes of transmission, 12 hours a day, for a life of about 6 days on the SLA (with then about 2 more days on the internal battery). That gives me 8 days, which should be enough to get some sort of power back online...
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