Unique Technology:
Multiple Thin Pure Lead Plates

The Hawker Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) battery is the world's only aviation battery to use 99.99% pure lead, combined with .01% tin, to provide the longest life, highest number of deep cycles and greatest power output of any SLA battery in the world!

Because of the purity of the lead, Hawker SLA batteries do not exhibit typical characteristics of Lead-Calcium and Lead-Antimony batteries. Hawker SLA batteries have exceptional charge retention and superb deep discharge recovery.

Hawker uses continuous strip manufacturing to produce plates that are very thin – .7mm thick as opposed to the 2-4mm thick plates common to lead-calcium SLA batteries.

Most SLA aviation battery manufacturers produce their plates by casting lead (mixed with calcium or antimony to make the metal more rigid) in a mold, resulting in thicker plates. Hawker uses a unique casting process that produces a continuous thin strip for plate manufacturing.

Thinner plates mean each cell can contain more plates without increasing the size or weight of the battery. The result is that the HEP SLA batteries have higher output power and are lighter in weight than ANY other SLA battery in the world-gravometric/volumetric comparison!

Pure lead and the unique construction of the Hawker battery also results in a very low impedance battery that offers cranking power output equaling that of Ni-Cad batteries.

Another advantage of the Hawker pure lead-acid battery is that it utilizes extremely pure sulfuric acid.

In fact, the sulfuric acid used in the HEP SLA battery is medical grade. As you can see from the graph, the freezing point of the medical grade sulfuric acid at 1.3 atmospheres is approximately -70 degrees C. The HEP SLA battery will not be damaged if subjected to freezing as low as -70 degrees C.

Other SLA batteries used for aviation typically use a lower purity and lower specific gravity of sulfuric acid which makes them significantly more vulnerable to freezing environments.

The result is that when any of the Lead Calcium SLA aviation batteries are subjected to temperatures below -40º C, the batteries' chemistry changes and are susceptible to damage.

Compared to Ni-Cad batteries, the Hawker SLA batteries perform with comparable cold performance (down to -40 degrees C). Hawker SLA batteries significantly outperform Ni-Cad's at hot temperatures (above 40 degrees C).