"Morgans" wrote in
news

"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote

An hour wasn't enough. I've done quite a few ten hour plus flights
away from anywhere to land in singles. Haveing to have two fuel
sources (diesel and electricity) is not what you want.

Good grief, 10 hours away from somewhere to land in a single? Where
were all these flights; over the ocean?


Mostly.


I suppose if I was going to take a single over the ocean for a ferry
flight, I'd want to rig in a deep discharge battery, with enough
capacity to fly me onward, feet wet to feet dry, at least.



I suppose the makers of electricity dependant engines could also add a
permanent magnet generator, for backup purposes. That would not have
to be very big, and would be a big comfort, I suppose.



Well, even with a large battery I still wouldn't be happy.


http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/v...?date=10111983
&reg=N748LL&airline=Air+Illinois

The report at the bottom of this is not quite correct. The failure of
one generator due to the engine failure caused a bump in the electrics
which knocked off the second generator. There;s no way the crew would
have de-enrgised a genny on an already dead engine.
Anyhow, the RCCB on the opposite side decided to give up the ghost and
at that time there was now way of resetting it from the flight deck
(they were all modified after this accident with the lamest rube
goldberg device you have ever seen)
The whole story of this accident is just so scary it's beyond belief.
The crew were trying to save batt power by turning off as many
unnecesary items as possible, including the cabin lights. When they did
that, the pax started agitating, so they put them on again and off agian
several times before impact.
Bottom line on this accident is that British Aerospace considered it
impossible to lose both generators due to a single electrical event.

They was wrooong.

To this day they conitinue to say "theh crew did this and the crew did
that" but they still modified the airplane.

And they wewren;t all that far from somewhere to land.

I'm not a wimp about that sort of thing. I fly single ignition airplanes
and airplanes with dry rickers you gotta grease every four hours or so.
But this engine goes into airplanes that were designed to be operated as
fairly serious cross country and instrument airplanes. If you put one of
these into a Cherokee or whatever I wouldn't have the same confidence in
the donkey as I would with a Lycoming.If you're going to fly one around
the patch on a sunday afternoon, that's one thing. If you're going to
fly instruments or at night or over water or rough terrain or in any
situation where a good visible landing spot is far away you might as
well be flying across a sea, Depend on a battery? I don't think so.

Bertie