Piper Wing Lighting

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 *
************************************************** ***********************

wrote:
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.

You can still operate it "whenever you need it" and it still be considered
"intermitant", because you don't operate it on every flight. The worse
thing that happens is that you pull the extra electical power out of the
battery for a little while. That said, it's alway nicer to have all the
alternator capacity you need in every situation.

--- Jay



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