Go to a store and buy a portable gasoline powered generator.
Get insulating blankets for the cowl, otherwise all the heat
will escape.
If you can setup some sort of remote starting for the
generator, you can get started warming it up or just start
the generator and go get a cup of coffee.


You don't want to be hauling hundreds of pounds of acid
filled batteries around.

Or run a powerline, they do that all the time at
construction sites.



"BDS" wrote in message
et...
|
| "Marco Leon" wrote in message
|
ups.com...
| I have a common problem of possessing a Tanis heater in
my Warrior but
| no electrical source by which to run it. Past newsgroup
and online
| knowledge (including an email from Tanis) say that at
least a couple
| of hours are needed to heat the engine in about 20 deg F
temps.
|
| An old post from 1999 suggested that a "deep cycle"
battery be used in
| conjuction with an inverter to be turned on a couple of
hours prior to
| flight.
|
| Looks like the smallest Tanis heaters are around 250
watts. Even with a
| good inverter you will probably consume around 300 watts,
or 25 amps at 12
| volts.
|
| Most of the deep cycle batteries are rated based on a
20-hr discharge rate.
| That means that a 225 amp-hr battery will only deliver
that storage capacity
| when it is discharged at the 20-hr rate, or in this case
about 12.5 amps -
| if you discharge it faster (25 amps) then you will not get
rated capacity.
| Of course, the battery will not do as well in very cold
temperatures either.
| In addition and IIRC, deep cycle batteries are designed to
be discharged to
| about 20% of capacity and no more.
|
| Even so, it looks like getting a couple of hours out of a
225 amp-hr battery
| shouldn't be a problem. You will just have to haul the
thing around and
| keep it charged all the time to be able to use it and to
keep it healthy. I
| wouldn't expect that you'd be able to run more than about
5 or 6 hours
| continuous though, and again, that's on a healthy battery.
|
| If your heater has a higher rating than 250 watts, you
would have to take
| that into account and decrease the numbers above
accordingly.
|
| BDS
|
|