Battery condition tester?

When I got out of my Silverado last weekend with the Kenwood 710 left on in beacon mode and voice alert, the dummy that was driving forgot to turn off the 710. After sitting for a week in this condition while I went in for surgery, the battery was dead when I tried to start the truck today. First I thought the key fob battery was dead, so I entered with a key. Truck would not start, not even the errrrhhhhh or click click of the flywheel trying to engage.

I was curious how long it was able to transmit, so I went to APRS.FI and looked for my last 1000 raw packets. It turns out that it died on 04-19 at 0412utc. A search will show the next packet was at22:05:19utc on 4-21, so this makes a good monitor of when the radiio is too weak to speak APRS.

I thought you would get a chuckle out of this and maybe even produce an app for our cell phones that will tell us we left the radio on. HI I know the 710 is not wired through a switched connection to the battery (on purpose) so I can work events with the keys in my pocket.

73, and thanks for all the fun I have had since I heard packet racket for the first time on K4UMI's 146.34/94 repeater at the Lunar Lander at NACA Langley and got a GLB PK1 to decode it with.

Jim WA4IVM FM17rc