Battery-Driven Tanis

"Marco Leon" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Jan 31, 6:41 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
Sounds like a perfect application for one of those annoying little
Honda generators that we always seem to get stuck next to when
camping...?

Annoying and expensive! The Honda's go for around $600 and the
Coleman's about $450. There's a DuroPower line that runs just north of
$100 but that price makes me take a step back.

Get creative. A weed eater motor driving a car alternator that had one of
it's three diodes go out, and had to replaced comes to mind. Combine that
with an inverter, and you have your needs met, for only junk parts.

That is on my list of "round to-it" projects, for one rainy day. g
--
Jim in NC

"Morgans" wrote

Get creative. A weed eater motor driving a car alternator that had one of
it's three diodes go out, and had to replaced comes to mind. Combine that
with an inverter, and you have your needs met, for only junk parts.

Something else I just remembered. I think instructions are out there to
change the output of an alternator to 120 volts DC. The heater does not
care if it is getting AC or DC. You would not even need an inverter, then.
--
Jim in NC

Marco Leon wrote:
On Feb 1, 8:26 am, "BDS" wrote:
That might not work so well in an application like this. If he has
the 250 watt heater and runs it for 3 hours then he has removed 750
watt-hours of energy from the battery (plus change).

A couple of web sites quote a 170 W BP solar panel at around $850. In
full sun this would take about four and a half hours to recharge the
battery. A 115 watt panel would take about six and a half hours and
cost $650. Add another $200 for a charge controller, wiring, etc and
another $100-$200 for the battery.

There's a guy with a solar-power setup on the ramp but I've never been
able to run into him to pick his brain. A friend heard that he has his
thing patented so I might get little info other than a price...

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice.

The US patent system is totally broken, so it wouldn't surprise me if
such a thing was patented. If it is, get the patent number out of him,
then go look it up at Google or at the Patent and Trademark Office and
you should get a full description. If you like what you see, and the
guy isn't an attorney himself, build one of your own and don't worry
about it. He has to sue you to get anywhere, and it's pretty easy to
show prior art... look at the Bell Labs literature from the 1950s and
I'm sure you can find "hey, you could charge a battery with these
things" in no later than the third article ever written about them.

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice.

I researched the solar powered thing briefly but stopped after the
numbers on the napkin hit 4-digits to the right of the dollar sign.

If you want to have a reasonable chance of being able to pre-heat the
next day, I'd believe it - see above.

Matt Roberds

True, the Canadian High brings clear sky, but the days are
still short. A low charged lead-acid battery can freeze.

As you said, a generator has uses year round, power after
the T-storm, maybe a portable welder.

It might be wonderful weather on Friday, but if Monday to
Thursday was blizzard, and the solar panel is under a foot
of snow and the sun hasn't shown for a week, will the
battery heat the engine? Then will the solar panels charge
the battery before it freezes and have it ready for the next
flight?


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
| Winter means thick overcast, how well will your solar
panels
| work in the cold with dark overcast and short days?
|
| I don't know. However, winter isn't always a thick
overcast,
| especially at this time of year.
|
| When it gets really, really cold, we are often under a big
bubble of
| Canadian high pressure. The sky turns cobalt blue, the
winds die
| down, and the temperature plummets. Today was an
absolutely perfect
| day to fly, if you don't mind the cold.
| --
| Jay Honeck
| Iowa City, IA
| Pathfinder N56993
| www.AlexisParkInn.com
| "Your Aviation Destination
|

And just another thought, how far away is the power grid?
Running 120 VAC or even 120/240 to a hanger means you can
work year round, have an air compressor, other power tools
and heat and fans.

My choice would be run a powerline, you can do a lot of that
yourself and get the power company to do the final
connection. Check the codes where you are.

Use a portable generator.

Start aircraft and fly to Texas, stay on the Gulf.



"Jim Macklin" wrote
in message ...
| True, the Canadian High brings clear sky, but the days are
| still short. A low charged lead-acid battery can freeze.
|
| As you said, a generator has uses year round, power after
| the T-storm, maybe a portable welder.
|
| It might be wonderful weather on Friday, but if Monday to
| Thursday was blizzard, and the solar panel is under a foot
| of snow and the sun hasn't shown for a week, will the
| battery heat the engine? Then will the solar panels
charge
| the battery before it freezes and have it ready for the
next
| flight?
|
|
| "Jay Honeck" wrote in message
|
oups.com...
|| Winter means thick overcast, how well will your solar
| panels
|| work in the cold with dark overcast and short days?
||
|| I don't know. However, winter isn't always a thick
| overcast,
|| especially at this time of year.
||
|| When it gets really, really cold, we are often under a
big
| bubble of
|| Canadian high pressure. The sky turns cobalt blue, the
| winds die
|| down, and the temperature plummets. Today was an
| absolutely perfect
|| day to fly, if you don't mind the cold.
|| --
|| Jay Honeck
|| Iowa City, IA
|| Pathfinder N56993
|| www.AlexisParkInn.com
|| "Your Aviation Destination
||
|
|

wrote

A couple of web sites quote a 170 W BP solar panel at around $850. In
full sun this would take about four and a half hours to recharge the
battery. A 115 watt panel would take about six and a half hours and
cost $650. Add another $200 for a charge controller, wiring, etc and
another $100-$200 for the battery.

Well, it looks like they are out there and available as you've pointed out.
When I looked at websites that offered them as battery chargers I only found
the smaller ones meant to keep an already charged battery at full charge.

Still, this is much more expensive than a small generator would be, and
depends on things like sunny days and being kept clear of ice and snow. The
small generator is the way I'd go if it were me.

There's a guy with a solar-power setup on the ramp but I've never been
able to run into him to pick his brain. A friend heard that he has his
thing patented so I might get little info other than a price...

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice.

I'm not an attorney either but I don't think you would get into any trouble
building one for yourself for your own use - who is going to hire an
attorney to sue you for $1,000 (the cost of pursuing it would be orders of
magnitude higher than that) and what attorney would be interested in such a
case? If you started manufacturing them and selling them, that would be a
different story.

BDS

Jim Macklin wrote:
Start aircraft and fly to Texas, stay on the Gulf.

As long as he promises to go back and keep any of those liberal northern
ideas to himself... We don't need anymore Damn Yankees down here...

"Morgans" wrote in message
...

Get creative. A weed eater motor driving a car alternator that had one of
it's three diodes go out, and had to replaced comes to mind. Combine that
with an inverter, and you have your needs met, for only junk parts.

Amazon has a generator for $89. Sounds like what you just descibed. Shipping
is $42, so I passed.

On Feb 2, 6:46 am, Grumman-581
wrote:
Jim Macklin wrote:
Start aircraft and fly to Texas, stay on the Gulf.

As long as he promises to go back and keep any of those liberal northern
ideas to himself... We don't need anymore Damn Yankees down here...

I hope you're not assuming that I'm a lib because I'm from New York. I
didn't think people used that term anymore other than to refer to Ted
Nugent's band.

I thought it was a musical movie about a baseball team.


Besides, what south Texas needs is more English speakers,
even if they are rude. ;-)



"Marco Leon" wrote in message
oups.com...
| On Feb 2, 6:46 am, Grumman-581

| wrote:
| Jim Macklin wrote:
| Start aircraft and fly to Texas, stay on the Gulf.
|
| As long as he promises to go back and keep any of those
liberal northern
| ideas to himself... We don't need anymore Damn Yankees
down here...
|
| I hope you're not assuming that I'm a lib because I'm from
New York. I
| didn't think people used that term anymore other than to
refer to Ted
| Nugent's band.
|