Jay Masino wrote:
: The way it was explained to me, once upon a time, was... Landing/Taxi
: lights are considered "intermitant loads" and are not added in for the 80%
: load calculation. Same goes for pitot heat. In fact, when you're adding
: up your loads, you only add the receive power draw for your Com radios,
: and not the transmit power draw.

I just did the power budget on my Cherokee after installing a whole panel of
equipment. It's amazingly vague how one is supposed to calculate that stuff. I would
consider landing/taxi lights and landing gear operation (A friend has electric-gear'd
Comanche) "intermittent loads"... also probably the Tx on the COM (perhaps even
adjusted to the 20% duty cycle rated for the radios). I would *NOT* consider pitot
heat an intermittent load. I want that to be able to run whenever I need it.... even
if I shouldn't be in that situation to begin with. It'd rate it right up there with
carb heat for continuous operation.

-Cory

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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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