Surviving Flight Recorder Power Failures
At a recent contest we got to talking about powering flight recorders
(and computers, etc) and how to survive a mid-flight power failure and
still get a log file. There are a couple of lines of thought.
1) Don't worry about it. The systems are pretty good these days and if
you wire things up right you won't have a failure.
2) Use two batteries with an A/B switch. This requires the recorder to
be able to survive the failure until you flip the switch. Some can
handle short power outages, others cannot. I have no test data to
suggest how long of an outage they can handle while a good battery is
switched in.
3) Place a separate backup battery on the recorder itself. Many
recorders have that feature. If this is a computer you may loose
functionality (vario, moving map) while retaining recording.
While my experience fall into #1, I am currently using #2 and thinking
about #3.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks, John
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