Pulled out my flash gear recently after a year and only a few fired up. Apparently the insides can die thru lack of use... Well it took a few hours to get one of them going again, just kept trying to turn it on with no sound of the charge or light coming on. I was gonna give up when I came back into the room after an hour or so and it came good. Has anyone else had such experiences?

In my teens I never knew about removing batteries promptly, and I found some bad corrosion once. Luckily an old timer told to clean up the corrosion with metho and it worked. Now I know it isn't perfect, but it might keep it going for another year. I also put a light spray/wipe of lanolin over the contacts sometimes. Does anyone else do this? I know it stops corrosion on car battery terminals.

BTW Does anyone have a good battery cover for an F280?

Capacitors need conditioning after long periods of non use. It's their nature.

True. Good time to use the A/C adapter or NiCads.