I have a shorted capacitor in OLJK switch. I am looking of a web
site, wiring diagram, new capacitor ect. This is a switch that allows
you to change batteries without losing power.

Can anyone help??

Bill Snead

On Feb 28, 6:31*pm, " > wrote:
> I have a shorted capacitor in OLJK switch. *I am looking of a web
> site, wiring diagram, new capacitor ect. *This is a switch that allows
> you to change batteries without losing power.
>
> Can anyone help??
>
> Bill Snead

I doubt you have a shorted capacitor. These things likely contain a
tantalum capacitor or similar. Those capacitors tend to fail open-
circuit and often due to being accident having the reverse voltage
applied--but hopefully a good design would have diode protection to
avoid this. And if anything has fails closed circuit across your
battery it will likely be open circuit pretty quickly...

I've never heard of an OLJK switch. If these are you trying to deal
with switch contact lag times of order 1-10 ms, ~10V and 1A type loads
then you can end up needing capacitors of order 1000uF or so, it all
depends on the voltage tolerance of the load. In this scenario the
capacitor is just placed across the load (it is if it inside the
master switch). If much smaller capacitors work in practice I start to
question wether they are needed at all--are you sure this is needed in
your case? If what you are trying to solve is a transient glitch
causing a problem for a logger, you are better off putting the
capacitor (and diodes) across just that devices. This has been
discussed here before. Search for Volkslogger and capacitor.

Personally I prefer two suitably sized master switches that allow
either or both batteries to be on the main buss.

Darryl

> Personally I prefer two suitably sized master switches that allow
> either or both batteries to be on the main buss.
>
> Darryl

Yep, I have flown with two switches for years. Simply switch on the
new battery just before switching off the old battery. Please, don't
tell me some horror story about "exploding" batteries! I have taken
readings with a 10v 'dead' battery connevted in parallel to a 12.8v
'fresh' battery and all I read was 300 m/a as the fresh battery tried
to charge the dead battery. And don't tell me about voltage spikes
either, because all those red-necks jumping their car batteries seem
to be surviving quite well, don't they?
JJ

> Yep, I have flown with two switches for years. Simply switch on the
> new battery just before switching off the old battery. Please, don't
> tell me some horror story about "exploding" batteries! I have taken
> readings with a 10v 'dead' battery connevted in parallel to a 12.8v
> 'fresh' battery and all I read was 300 m/a as the fresh battery tried
> to charge the dead battery. And don't tell me about voltage spikes
> either, *because all those red-necks jumping their car batteries seem
> to be surviving quite well, don't they?
> JJ

My panel is wired according to JJ's plan. Two batteries. Two
switches. One buss. The avionics shop owner/technician and I
discussed the "make before break" type of switch, but he said his two
switches would work just as well. And as JJ said, switch the second
battery "on" before switching the first battery "off". So far, I
haven't had any probems.

And, I resemble JJ's remark about red-necks jumping car batteries!

Ray Lovinggood
Born and raised in SC, currently employed and living in NC.
And if you want to see some red-necks, just come to my family
reunion...

OLJK = DPDT? Make before break? The only web reference to OLJK
points back to us! The idea of a capacitor to keep power going during
a battery switch cycle is an interesting idea. How big of a cap would
we need to survive a 1sec loss of power with a 500ma load allowing for
a 1VDC drop?

I personally use the two (fused) batteries in parallel approach and
haven't had any issues at all. But am toying with the two batteries
and two switches (three counting a master) approach. A late winter
project. That and replacing all my connectors with powerpoles. I
REALLY like these modular connectors which come in a myriad of
colors.

One thing to note. Before a speech I gave at the 2007 SSA convention
on "Soaring Avionics Wiring" I wanted to know if flight recorders
would survive a temporary power outage while switching batteries. So
I wrote to every manufacturer and found that all except the
Volkslogger will easily survive several seconds of lost power. PLUS
they each will keep the same log file intact. A "small" gap in a log
file is legal as long as it is obvious that it is the same flight.
This has more to do with a lost GPS signal than a power outage but the
effect is the same.

My $0.02.

- John DeRosa

On Mar 2, 5:53*pm, ContestID67 > wrote:
>*How big of a cap would
> we need to survive a 1sec loss of power with a 500ma load allowing for
> a 1VDC drop?

Constant current discharge of a capacitor (will be close enough)...

C = t . i / deltaV
= 1 . 0.5 / 1
= 0.5 F

Easily doable with today's supercapacitors. But as I pointed out
earlier, mechanical switch issues usually happen over time frames of
10's of ms. Not 1 sec. And why do anything if it is not really needed.

Darryl

On Mar 1, 9:18*am, JJ Sinclair > wrote:
> > Personally I prefer two suitably sized master switches that allow
> > either or both batteries to be on the main buss.
>
> > Darryl
>
> Yep, I have flown with two switches for years. Simply switch on the
> new battery just before switching off the old battery. Please, don't
> tell me some horror story about "exploding" batteries! I have taken
> readings with a 10v 'dead' battery connevted in parallel to a 12.8v
> 'fresh' battery and all I read was 300 m/a as the fresh battery tried
> to charge the dead battery. And don't tell me about voltage spikes
> either, *because all those red-necks jumping their car batteries seem
> to be surviving quite well, don't they?
> JJ

JJ right again.
Simple
No special stuff
Has worked for me for 30 yr.
UH