Let's get something straight. I am NOT going to bail out if I lose the battery, OK? But IF the panel goes out when I am 100 miles away from the home 'drome, and it's getting late in the day, I don't necessarily need the added hassle of not having my moving map, electronic vario and instruments, my transponder, radio and all those helpful little devices.

We enjoy the benefits of many technologies on cross-country flights. It's not to say that we HAVE to depend on them, but we use them to our advantage much of the time.

When I am way out of simple glide ratio of the field, I like to have some information about the wind, along with things like communication and traffic avoidance.


If I was a "twirly bird," screwing around the airport no farther away than a 20:1 glide, I wouldn't care. But with the sort of flying I prefer, I will not depend on a single power source. And, yes, I had a failure earlier this year due to a poor ground connection on one battery. But I switched to number two, flew two more hours and tightened the screw on the ring terminal when I got back. My own fault for not securing the connection in the first place, BUT!...

I had a backup. And another after that.