Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

[N95334]

Well I have given in and bought a Garmin Aera 500 GPS and an Icom radio.
On a long cross country the batteries don't last too long in the GPS or Radio.
I was thinking about putting a small motorcycle or lawn tractor battery in the cockpit under the pilots legs strapped in with Velcro straps. Think maybe hook it to a cigarette lighter and install that in the instrument panel.
Anyone see any problems with that?
Or maybe use some type of solar panel to keep a constant charge on the batteries?

[Hank Jarrett]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

The pre-war planes had a battery box there and I have the drawings of it if you want to do it the original way (less hassles from the feds if you do it the way the factory did). Looks like your plane is a post war from the N number but that isn't a big problem either. The post war planes had a location under the baggage sling. Unfortunately I don't have drawings for that one.
Hank

You can bet SOMEONE on here does!

[astjp2]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

There is a 337 for a micro air radio on the tech resources page, it uses a 7Ah sealed lead acid battery (recombinant gas) , I got 24 hours of flight time when I turned off the radio when i was away from ATC. You might also look at a Burls box and odessy battery mounted on the firewall, I did the 337 for that last summer. Tim

[VictorBravo]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

Many years ago I invented something called a "Dura-Pack". It used the Gates (now Hawker) sealed cells and had a cigarette lighter plug on the end. The neat thing about those batteries is that they can take a much more harsh charge-discharge cycle than any other type. This gave me the ability to charge the battery DIRECTLY from the car cigarette lighter with a male-male plug and no "charger". I simply drove to the airport with this battery hooked directly up to the lighter, and then put it in the plane and ran my radio and GPS.

Unfortunately, they didn't sell well because of the cost, and the newer Nickel Metal Hydride batteries were coming out.

The upside is the ability to charge off the car, and having a very safe NON-volatile and NON-delicate battery in the cockpit.

The downside is that the sealed batteries do not have the energy density that the newer stuff has, and nowhere near the density of a Lithium Polymer cell (which can burn your airplane in seconds).

If I were you, I'd get 6 or 7 of the Hawker cells in about 2AH size, and wire them together to make up a 12 or 14V pack. Terminate it in TWO female cigarette lighter plugs from Avionics Shack. This way you can run a radio and a portable GPS at one time, or be charging the battery in the car and listening to the radio at the same time, etc. My packs weighted about 3 pounds and would run my King KX-99 handheld for hours and hours and hours and hours. Even if I got stuck at a remote airport, all I had to do was find someone to let me plug it in to their car for an hour or so.

This was a simple, elegant solution that did not require any modifications to the aircraft or anything bolted in.

Bill

[Dano"T"]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

Here's a battery pack made by Coleman that I use...it weighs 7 or 8 pounds...plug into to wall to recharge. I've had this for 6 years with no problems....I have never even come close to running it dead...I've even jump started my boat, ATV, etc many times with it. there are lights on the front indicating charge level. There is also a flourescent work light built in on top. Throw this in you baggage sling and you'll be good to go. I'm sure there are other manufacturers....check Wal Mart or something like that.

[IMG][/IMG]

[SCRed]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

If your new Icom radio is a hand held, beware that if you attempt to provide power with the Icom supplied 12volt charging cord, the radio will not transmit when the cord is plugged in to a power source. Icom does that in order to discourage folks like us from using their hand helds as primary radios.

There is a work around. If you are interested, PM me and I'll be glad to share a solution that has worked wonderfully for me.

[Dano"T"]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

I have an older Icom and it works fine on the 12v battery pack....must be a new thing.

[NY86]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

Be wary of the lawn tractor batteries. They do not have any provisions to prevent acid
spills. OTOH, gel cells are readily available, reasonably priced and relatively safe.

[astjp2]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

Its actually Hydrogen Sulfide, highly corrosive and explosive. Gel cells are the thing of the past, most are now recombinant matt gas. They are newer technology. Tim

[NY86]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

You mean like if I flew in moderate to severe turbulence, did spins, over the top negative G maneuvers...

Not sure how to take that...

Lawn tractor batteries are vented. The vents have no provision to prevent acid from passing through. Any negative G maneuver, including turbulence, can cause acid to pass out the vents. Aircraft batteries have specific caps and geometry to prevent this, even if you end up upside down. Sealed batteries will not leak under normal conditions regardless of position or G forces.

Tim: I occasionally say "re-license" instead of "annual" and "gel cell" instead of "AMG" or whatever...

[NY86]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

You can get a 12 volt 9 AH sealed battery (for a computer UPS) for less than $20.00. Lighter, too...

[rammon3]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

I'm with you, John, on the tractor battery. I've seen first hand (as well as many A & P's have) what a lead acid battery can do if not properly installed or maintained. The tractor battery caps will not prevent spills the way the typical A/C battery caps will. Even those are not perfect. The AGM batteries make perfect sense as there is no liquid electrolyte to spill. For most of us without starters, etc., the UPS battery is a good idea (and less expense). Just MHO.

[astjp2]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

You are right the sealed batteries are the way to go, and i have gotten them approved for installation on the floor board. See microair 337 in tech references section. I had a billit aluminum retainer built and had to carry a spare but it has worked for over 10 years. No bungie cords or velcro so if I ever get into an accident no ballastic battery bomb rattling around the cockpit. Tim

[N95334]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

Thanks for the good info guys and gals. This forum is very valuable. On this 12V 9AH computer UPS sealed battery, What is the 9 AH? Also they are putting lights in our little grass peapatch airport 01J Hilliard Fla. So now I was thinking about using the running lights that are wired into my Taylorcraft. Question on that, would that be enough power or amps to run the lights , are the lights 12V? What about cockpit lights, instruments lights requirments? These new LED small flashlights could be an answer. Not any serious night flying just playing around, dancing with the moon after sunset near the field for an hour or so.

[astjp2]

Re: Want to use battery in my Taylorcraft

Ok First thing is the 9ah stands for 9 amp hour, in short you can use 1 amp in 9 hours or 9 amps in 1 hour. or .5 amp in 18 hours, .25 amps in 36 hours.

It is the allowable storage of the battery. You need to average your transmitting amps used with your listening amps and use a power factor of about .7 or you can use 70% of the 9ah before the voltage drops too low for your radio and GPS

This means if you tranmit on your radio and it is measuring 2.5 amps and when you are just listening with the GPS on and it is .5 amps.


If you transmit for 6 minutes on average per hour, you are using 2.5 amps for 10% of an hour and .5 amps for 90% of the hour.
In one hour you will have used ...shit i need the calculator for this.... is .7 amps per hour. You take your 9 ah battery and use a power factor of .7 this means that you can use 70% of the available 9 ah.
another calcuator

9 X .7= 6.3 amp hours available for use
6.3 / .7 amps used per average hour = 9 hours of average use before you need to recharge.


As to your second question, since your airplane was certified, you cannot legally fly at night with just a battery, you must have a power source like a wind generator or an engine driven generator. Your aircraft is old enough to get by on a wind generator, part 23 certified aircraft must have an engine driven generator/alternator. For interior lighting, there are lots of products out there but most are not approved for use in certified aircraft, just because joe blow used it in his RV4,5,6,9,2 etc. you may not be allowed to use it in your taylorcraft. There are some Approve LED navigation lights and anti collision lights that use very little power and are light weight and small but they are expensive. If you want I can look up the references for what i told you but I am confident that you can take what I told you as pretty close to fact. Tim