You of course are totally correct Tracy. Anyone who signs up to build their own airplane, and to power it with an engine that is not what the designer recommended has to be willing to accept complete responsibility for all installation and integration issues. Even if they buy hardware from a third party such as you.

 

Say what you want about standard aircraft engines, but at least the installation requirements are well known. I doubt there are any two rotary installations that are identical. We are on the bleeding edge.

 

In my install I remote mounted the switches from the control panel. I did this for a number of reasons, one of which is I chose to use MS switches which are larger, much more robust, and have a much stiffer snap action when toggling. They are harder to accidentally switch but I have still had a couple of occasions where I've accidentally toggled the A - B controller selector while climbing in or out of the airplane. Like I said in my previous, I'm considering removing the cold start switch since I've never had a need to use it. Personal choice.

 

Can you give a little more detail about where that nut that shorted out the EC2 came from? Was it one of the nuts that secures the pcb to the case lid?

 

Mike Wills 

From: Tracy Crook

Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 7:10 AM

To: Rotary motors in aircraft

Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Ut-Oh...

I know Dave or Jon wouldn't phrase it this way but I've already received a number of messages from others about these two recent in-flight power failures due to EC2 issues.

 Jon's was due to a loose mounting nut inside the EC2 that shorted the main power input filter to ground and burned open both foils from the 2 power input pins.  How lucky was that.

  Anyway, at the risk of sounding defensive, I thought I'd share my response to one of them that suggested changing the EC2 case to an external mount of some sort.  I'm sure there are scores of messages on the way urging me to place switch guards on the cold start switch  : )

REPLY

Hello ----------
  I'm aware of the failure and have the unit here for repair.

   Like a thousand other critical details in building an aircraft, it is not possible to explicitly spell out all of them.  The precise method and hardware used to accomplish it are not part of the EC2 or the instructions. The first paragraph of the installation guide does say the following:

"Needless to say, the quality of installation is just as important as the quality of the hardware itself.  It is not practical to include a course on proper electrical wiring practices in these installation instructions, but it is imperative that proper wiring techniques be employed during the installation of the EC2."

It was my thought that avoiding the presence of loose metal objects inside an electrical device that your life depends on fell into the category of  "needless to say".

Nevertheless, a cautionary note might well be worth adding.   As also stated in the first paragraph of the instructions,
" I want your project to succeed and your life to be a long and happy one. "

All the best,
Tracy Crook,    RWS
 

On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 2:34 AM, David Leonard <wdleonard@gmail.com> wrote:

Boy,  word sure gets around these days.. 

short answer... inadvertently hit cold start switch while messing with GPS and flying at 1000' AGL..  not enough time to troubleshoot...  had to fly plane and find a place to land.

Both happy and appalled when the I realized the problem 2 minutes after the commotion stopped.  The tower must have been plain appalled when I took off again later this afternoon.

--
David Leonard

Turbo Rotary RV-6 N4VY
http://N4VY.RotaryRoster.net
http://RotaryRoster.net

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Dave <david.staten@gmail.com> wrote:

Bill Monroe wrote:

Dave’s going to have an interesting story to tell…

http://www.cbs8.com/global/story.asp?s=12136229

Glad he landed safe..

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