--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford

"T. McQuinn" wrote in message
...
Thanks, Jim. I have been looking for something like this, though for a
different purpose. I hate the cigarette lighter outlet but I need it for
portable GPS power. If you so much as sneeze on the current setup it may
break the connection and interrupt the power. It's also butt ugly.

No you don't need the ciggie lighter jack in the airplane. Two ways of
proceeding. One, the sanitary way, cut the ciggie plug off and rewire it to
a nice small 2.1mm plug. Two, get yourself a ciggie jack and make a patch
cord from your gps ciggie plug to a 2.1mm plug.



It does bring up a couple of questions for me.

1) How can I find out how much power the Jameco 151590 can handle. I
can't find anything in the POH that tells me how big of a circuit breaker
the cig. lighter is on, but I assume it's a whopper. (I actually have the
old cig. lighter somewhere and it looks like you could light a cigar with
it.)

Jameco is notoriously short on specifications in their catalog. Mouser,
however, has the manufacturer's data sheet showing the connector to be rated
at half an amp at 12/24 volts. The keep-alive breaker (clock, radio memory,
etc.) can be up to 5 amps by regulation, and most of us throttle it back
down to an amp or two with a smaller breaker. My suspicion is that little
connector could stand a couple of amps in short circuit mode until the
breaker popped in fault mode. I'd NEVER use the same circuit that the old
ciggie lighter used for a couple of reasons. One, it isn't direct to the
battery so you could never use it for trickle charging. Two, who needs 15
amps of aux power unless you are trying to run a ham rig with lots of
transmit power.



2) Especially if I don't have to rewire to another (lower amperage)
breaker, this would be a trivial change, right? Nothing more than a
logbook entry from a cooperative A&E?

Even IF you rewire it to another breaker, it is a minor (logbook)
modification by my standards. BTW, FAA policy is clear on this. It is the
INSTALLING A&P's decision as to whether a modification is major (337 & field
approval) or minor (logbook entry). Clearly, hanging an O-470 on a C-150 is
a major mod. Wiring a small circuit breaker by THIS A&P's decision is not.

Jim

Jim