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Old April 24th 04, 02:31 AM
Tom Jackson
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I shut it off again because it just didn't seem right. I've see almost full
right deflection before, but not when it goes off the scale, pegged against
the stop. I had a car with an ammeter once that shorted out and almost
caused a fire. Didn't want to see that in flight, so as a precaution, I
shut it down.


"Dave Butler" wrote in message
...
Tom Jackson wrote:
The other day, I was flying and noticed that my ammeter guage was

reading 0
(it had been reading fine for a long portion of the flight.) Also, I

had

This is the funky Piper "load meter", right? It reads zero at the left of

the
scale, not in the center? So "reading fine" means it had been somewhere in

the
center of the range, or at least not all the way to the left?

been running a lap-top from the cigar lighter plug for the first time

ever.
I turned-off virtually all electric devices and continued to my

destination.
I also shut-off the alternator switch. Later in the flight, I tried
recycling the alternator switch, and the guage would read full

deflection,
so I then would shut the alternator switch off again.


Full deflection to the right? i.e. maximum current is being delivered from

the
alternator? Seems like what I would expect to happen after the alternator

has
been turned off for a while. Why did you shut it off again?


Later in the day, I fired-up the plane - could tell that the battery was
weak because it could hardly pull the prop through. The ammeter guage,
however seemed to look ok - appeared to be charging the battery. I

figured
that somehow it had recycled itself, so I took off and headed home

without
incident (I watched the ammeter guage very closely throughout the

flight,
and it appeared normal throughout.)

The plane is a 1974 Piper Warrior - 151.

Any thoughts? Was it merely a failsafe due to too much current being

drawn
from the lap-top? Should I have it looked at?

Thanks