Batteries are the Rodney Dangerfields of aviation: They get no respect. We let them sit unused for weeks at a time and then expect them to crank our engine. We deep-discharge them by forgetting to turn off the master switch and then jump-start our airplane to go flying, subjecting the battery to a punishing rate of charge. We fail to check our aircraft bus voltage regularly, and allow it to drift too high or too low. Perhaps we check the battery's electrolyte level once a year at annual (if we don't forget); between annuals, it's out of sight and out of mind.Then, after five or six years of faithful service, we curse them when they refuse to start the engine on a brisk, winter, Sunday morning in Cold-As-Hell, N.D., when there's not a mechanic or battery cart anywhere on the field.We learned most of these bad habits from our experience with automobiles. Automotive batteries are big, heavy, hell-for-stout brutes that can take this kind of licking and keep on ticking.But aircraft batteries aren't Die-Hards. They're built to be lightweight and compact. Their capacity is quite low compared to automotive batteries. Their plates are comparatively thin, fragile and closely spaced. They simply can't stand the kind of abuse -- either physical or electrical -- that car batteries seem to shrug off without even noticing.If you treat it right, your aircraft battery should provide three to five years of reliable service (and some owners do even better). If you don't, it'll leave you stranded in the worst possible place at the worst possible time. Count on it.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/the-savvy-aviator-27-battery-tlc