Dugaru
Well Known Member
Okay, so my lastest adventure appears to be an intermittent failure of my charging system. I have a PP alternator, externally regulated with a PP voltage regulator. All indications are normal at startup. After takeoff, everything runs normally for a while, and then I get a low voltage warning on the EIS 4000, along with a popped breaker for my electronic ignition (a Lightspeed). At this point the charging system appears to have failed completely, and I seem to be running on battery power and magneto alone.
I've downloaded the Plane Power troubleshooting flow chart and will be jumping on that, multimeter in hand, tomorrow. But I thought I would see if anyone had any ideas about how the electronic ignition system might or might not play into this scenario. Prior to this adventure, I wouldn't have expected a "normal" failure of the charging system to have caused the EI breaker to pop; I would have thought that the EI would continue to run on battery power like everything else, at least until the battery was exhausted. But I'm not the builder, and I confess I'm no expert on the relevant failure modes here.
I've downloaded the Plane Power troubleshooting flow chart and will be jumping on that, multimeter in hand, tomorrow. But I thought I would see if anyone had any ideas about how the electronic ignition system might or might not play into this scenario. Prior to this adventure, I wouldn't have expected a "normal" failure of the charging system to have caused the EI breaker to pop; I would have thought that the EI would continue to run on battery power like everything else, at least until the battery was exhausted. But I'm not the builder, and I confess I'm no expert on the relevant failure modes here.
