May 16, 2006

On the way to the hangar, I stopped by a motorcycle store to buy the smallest gell cell battery they had. The other night, I’d tested the system to see if I could hit the starter motor and not kill the EFIS. Well, it didn’t do as I’d hoped. I was hoping that there’d be enough in the battery to sustain the EFIS during start up, with the PC680 battery and the Sky-Tec starter motor that supposedly draws less current than all the others. I hit the starter switch for a nanosecond, and the E1 shut down, and started rebooting. Oh well. It had been warned about in the past. I was just hanging on to the slim chance that it wouldn’t happen to me.

I got a baby Yuasa battery. It’s pretty small. I’ll take a piccy of it and post it tomorrow. I got a gell cell one so that I can orient it in any position that takes my fancy in the plane. Plus, it won’t leak acid all over the place if I do a loop or roll and accidently pull -ve G’s! All I have to do now is find somewhere to put the thing! I ordered a shottky diode from Allied Electronics to stop the starter from sucking the life out of the battery at start up. This is enough to keep the EFIS going through the start up process. Important to me, as my engine gauges are on it! Yikes!