GreekMan, I like your 18650 links way better than mine,
but I use the batteries I linked to all the time,
they can take high drain just fine
and at least the ones I have include the protection circuit inside them, but you never know when they change what you actually get when ordering...
if you have a protection circuit in the holder and one in the battery, I have seen it just fail to work (especially on charge)
so make sure you don't have 2 sets of protection circuits,
was planning on recharging them in series with my solar charge controller,
so they would never hit that high voltage that would hurt my radio,
all my "12V" radios including my HT can take 15V-16V, but would only charge the set to 14.2V where my solar charge controller cuts out
if a set gets to far off voltage from one cell to the other, the protection circuit will just take that set off line, so I would hope for no fire...
just connect all 4 cells in parallel to equalize them, and if I do it every so often I should be fine
if I wanted real high discharge batteries, I would 4 of get these
http://www.electriccarpartscompany.com/b-20Ah-32V-64W-5C-b-br-Aluminum-Encased-Battery-br-ISO9001-CE-UN383-MSDS-certified-br-Lithium-LiFePO4-LFP-Custom-Built-BatterybrUSA-Stockh34000-Cycles-Continuous-Charger-Cycles-br-Click-Image-Gallery-to-see-cycle-graphh3_p_113.htmlI already have two 60AH ones that are similar, (LiFeYPO4)
but would need a boost switcher supply to make that low voltage work,
just don't have one that will do 10A and do it RF quiet
but can run my HTs off of the set perfect
by the way, I tried my setup with 4 pounds removed (while testing my 3.5F cap.)
and it was way easier to carry,
so I am pretty close to the weight I need, the lithium batteries would do it.
while testing, I found out that the 3.5F cap., the 20W solar, and no batteries will run the FT-817 at full power out (even on FM)
but will not run it with the power amp even in SSB mode...
same applies to the 7.5AH AGM battery I have, the power amp faults from low voltage.
so until I get lithiums or NiCad, I will be stuck with the heavy battery