In rec.aviation.soaring Alan wrote:
In article "Morgans" writes:
"Peter Dohm" wrote

I 'm confident that the installation is the biggest part of it--especially
when you include enough solar panels to power it all reliably.

Why solar cells? A 7 amp hour lead acid gel cell can be had for about 20 bucks,
and would run a solid state transponder for a whole flight.

One doesn't want to run the lead acid battery down past about 1/2 its capacity
to get a reasonable service life from it, so that limits you to 3.5 AH.

What kind of unreasonable service life do you get if you use the full
capacity, and at $20 each do you care if you use it up faster? Unless you
can count the number of cycles on your fingers that may be the simplest
and most cost effective way to go, although of course I may be overlooking
something important.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software