>Another thing about cigar lighters - if you must use them , dont mount them
>horizontally where anything can fall into them. A friend of mine (Europa
>Flyer) was on the way back from Prague (to UK) last year. One of his
>electrical circuits kept blowing (it happened to be the one with all the nav
>equipment - in his case it was the glass cockpit display). In the end he had
>to do without the equipment and fly on the basic instruments.
>
>The cause of the problem - you guessed it - a foreign metallic body in the
>cigar lighter !!!
The interesting thing about this anecdote is the fact that
one kind of failure in the system (shorted power jack for
the cockpit hand-held equipment) precipitated other
failures. In this case, too many devices sharing the
same protected circuit.
Builders in love with acres-o-breakers risk a falling out
when the available panel space and/or budget for breaker
dollars run short. The most conservative philosophy for
system architecture dictates a single protected feeder
for each device in the airplane that needs power from the
system.
Fuse-blocks give you the opportunity to have lots of
spare slots for future growth at first flight. While
it's never wrong to pile up on a single breaker from
a fire-safety perspective, it can be bad news when too
many things go dark at the same time.
Bob . . .
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( Knowing about a thing is different than )
( understanding it. One can know a lot )
( and still understand nothing. )
( C.F. Kettering )
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http://www.aeroelectric.com
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