Grip Placards

[Electrogunner]

Originally Posted by Greenley

Here is what I did.

Bill,
How did you make that? That is the exact configuration I need for my -10.

[majuro15]

Jeff sent me his original designs and asked me to share them. I'll post them this evening when I'm home.

[Dugaru]

Maybe you?ve already thought of this, but: if you?re going with a stick-mounted starter, I?d suggest a setup where it takes flipping a guarded switch somewhere to activate the stick-mounted starter button. My starter button, originally installed on the stick, was hot whenever the master was flipped on. I was walking around the plane once when an instructor, who had turned on the master, bumped it by accident. The prop almost clubbed me in the head!

Originally Posted by JRichichi

There are many threads devoted to adding "placards" for your grip switches. I'd thought I'd add a few pics on how I did mine. I've got the Tosten "Military Style" grips. They have a convex upper surface and this provided a great place to add a placard. A couple of pics of what I did are shown below. I made the artwork and had Aluma Photo-Plate Co. (http://www.alumaphoto-plateco.com/pr...etalphoto.html make me some placards. I used Solidworks to make the placards but any software that will produce properly scaled PDF's (at least 300 DPI in black and white) will work. The placards are made from 0.003" thick aluminum and have the "Metalphoto" finish. They also have a pressure sensitive adhesive on them to allow for easy installation on the grips. I sent these pics to Kevin at Tosten and he's looking into adding something like this to his website so you can design your own versions and send them to Aluma Photo-Plate to get made. I'm not sure what Kevin's timeline is for this however. The price for both the LH and RH versions including a few spare placards was $50 (YMMV). Turn around was just a couple of days. I thought they looked great and Ken at Aluma Photo-Plate was very helpful in the process.

I hope this helps.

Jeff

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[JRichichi]

I've seen that a few people have brought up the issue that you could accidentally engage the starter if you have the starter switch on the grips. I agree that this could be a problem.

To minimize the chance of this happening, I installed an "ARM" toggle switch on my instrument panel. The toggle is an OFF-ON-(ON) type switch. When the switch is OFF (the toggle at it's lower position), the grip starter push buttons are not active. When I place the toggle to the "ARM" position (the toggle in its middle position) the grip starter buttons are "hot". After I've started the engine, I place the switch back to OFF to prevent the starter from accidentally being engaged. I can also use the panel switch to start the engine too since the most upward position is a momentary on.

Yes, it takes a bit more switch flipping to prevent an accidental starter engagement, but it also allows me to hold the stick back with one hand while working the mixture & throttle with the other hand while starting the engine (I've got an RV-7). I couldn't think of a better way to do this but if someone has an idea on how to do three things with only two hands, please let me know.

I hope this helps.

Jeff