X-Virus-Scanned: clean according to Sophos on Logan.com Return-Path: Received: from fmailhost03.isp.att.net ([207.115.11.53] verified) by logan.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.1.11) with ESMTP id 2244317 for flyrotary@lancaironline.net; Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:57:52 -0400 Received-SPF: pass receiver=logan.com; client-ip=207.115.11.53; envelope-from=ceengland@bellsouth.net Received: from [209.215.63.241] (host-209-215-63-241.jan.bellsouth.net[209.215.63.241]) by bellsouth.net (frfwmhc03) with ESMTP id <20070805235714H0300sq7aqe>; Sun, 5 Aug 2007 23:57:14 +0000 X-Originating-IP: [209.215.63.241] Message-ID: <46B663DA.8020400@bellsouth.net> Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:57:14 -0500 From: Charlie England User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070222 SeaMonkey/1.1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rotary motors in aircraft Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] Alternator drawing current at rest. References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Leonard wrote: > That current draw for the coils did seem high, so I checked further into > it. Turns out it is the alternator drawing the 3 amps, not the coils. > It gets warm to the touch. Is that normal? > > Dave Leonard The field winding uses power to create the magnetic field. If the alternator is active but not spinning, that sounds like a reasonable draw. IIRC, most fields are on 5A-7A circuit breakers. Charlie