On Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 3:42:56 PM UTC-7, kinsell wrote:
On 07/26/2018 12:34 PM, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
On Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 10:10:25 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Right on, Mark.



As a former jet jockey, myself, I prefer simplicity and fewer
switches.Â* And, whereas one big battery would be nice (forgetting
single point failures), space quickly becomes an issue.Â* It's much
easier to locate two or more smaller batteries around the ship than
finding a place for a big one.Â* One of my friends removed the nose
ballast from his glider and replaced it with an SLA battery.Â* A much
better use of lead, don'tcha think?



...And if you want more switches, go to an air museum and take a
look in the cockpit
of a MiG-21...




On 7/25/2018 8:55 PM,
wrote:



There's a lot to be said for reducing component count.

Yes, there is a definite charm to single point-of-failure systems.

But charm don't count when the failure occurs and you are out of backups and ideas.




I got an idea! How about you keep flying the A/C? Do you fly a glider
that crashes if you lose the panel? In 40 years of flying with a
single battery for the avionics, I've never lost the panel. Absolutely
could happen. Not catastrophic if it does.

The reality is all the solutions proposed have single points of failure.
If you can't handle an occasional failure, maybe find a different hobby?

Early on when I was more careless about checking on the health of my battery, I have had electrical failures while flying. Since then I have only been inconvenienced a few times on the ground when my batteries were incapable of starting the engine. That said, having a backup is not a bad idea. Especially for my new glider where the primary flight display is electronic. Even then, I could still fly the glider by visual reference only.

Tom