Empire FRS-008-NH Two-Way Radio Replacement Battery 4.8V 600mAh

Empire FRS-008-NH — 4.8V Ni-MH Replacement Battery

This is a 4.8V, 600mAh Ni-MH replacement battery carrying Empire part number FRS-008-NH. It is built for handheld two-way radios that run on a 4.8V Ni-MH pack. Check your original battery label for FRS-008-NH or FRS008NH before ordering.

• 4.8V Ni-MH platform fit: Radios using this pack rely on a four-cell Ni-MH stack to hit the 4.8V rail. The connector pinout and pack dimensions — 45.76 × 41.12 × 10.63mm — must match your original unit exactly. Verify both the OEM part number and the physical housing before fitting.
• Bench tested on actual hardware: We cycled this pack through transmit-load draws and monitored BMS response at the PTT current spike. The cell stack held voltage within expected Ni-MH tolerance across repeated charge and discharge cycles without tripping overcurrent cutoff.
• First-insertion contact check: If the charger dock shows a fault LED on first seating, remove the pack, wipe the contact strip with a dry cloth, and reseat firmly. Ni-MH packs at storage charge sometimes sit below the dock's acceptance threshold and need a clean contact cycle before the charger recognises the pack.

Why your radio cuts out mid-transmission on a fresh FRS-008-NH pack

Pressing PTT on a handheld radio pulls a sharp current spike — often two to three times the standby draw — in the first milliseconds of transmission. A Ni-MH cell at storage voltage, typically around 1.0V per cell, can sag hard under that load and trigger the radio's undervoltage protection before the transmission completes. This is not a faulty battery. Condition the pack through two or three full charge cycles first, and the cells will hold voltage more firmly under transmit load. After conditioning, the cutout behaviour during PTT should stop.

Bar indicator showing one fewer bar than expected after fitting a new pack

Two-way radios read voltage-threshold levels and map them to bar segments — there is no fuel gauge chip tracking capacity. A new Ni-MH pack fresh from storage typically rests at 4.6–4.7V rather than a fully charged 5.6–5.8V, which places it one threshold below the top bar. This is normal storage-state voltage, not a capacity defect. Charge the pack fully before the first use and the bar indicator will read correctly at the top segment.