Pete Schaefer wrote:
"Frank van der Hulst" wrote in message
...

First thing would be Bluetooth headsets... no more cords tangling round
the cockpit.


That would be pretty nice. But now you need batteries in your headset to
power the audio amp.

Yeah. I wonder whether head movement would produce enough power... like
the 'self-winding' watches of the 1970s.

Next would be various engine instruments... EGT, CHT, etc.

I guess you'd need some devices (i.e. wires) for routing the signal through
the firewall or around it. How much lighter would this be than, say, a
twisted pair for CAN?

Not necessarily... I guess you're talking about a metal firewall
shielding the signals, right? But, assuming a fibreglass cowl, mount a
self-powered repeater someplace where the engine instruments can see it,
and where the instrument panel can see it (e.g. a bump on top of the
cowl, on a wingtip, on the leading edge, on the landing gear perhaps).
An extra benefit is that you no longer need (as many) penetrations
through the firewall.

Maybe move the entire radio receiver out to a wingtip or somewhere well
away from the engine's RF noise.
But I can't see that being self-powered.


The receiver could be, but not the transmitter. An antenna wire is probably
a lot lighter than running power out, so I guess that would need to stay in
the cockpit.

Well, I did suggest (kinda tongue-in-cheek) using RF to power the radio
transmitter, as Nicola Tesla proposed way back in the (IIRC) 1930s.

Yeah, I know that none of these things is quite right, right now.
There's lots of engineering to be done to make it workable. But I think
we *probably* have enough technology to be able to begin implementing
this kind of stuff.

Frank