I bought my TSIO 550 engine with dual LS Plasma III. Before I ever ran it I heard about one or two engine failures where LS Plasma III ignitions had failed. I then switched to one mag and have flown 55 hours before I had to rebuild the engine. That's another story and has nothing to do With the Lightspeed.
I haven't got the engine back yet from Barrett in Tulsa but I'll say that the time I put on the engine and the work prior to first flight leads me to have a lot of faith in this ignition system. The pickup sensors appear to be very robust. The engine runs more smoothly on the LS than on the mag. Prior to first flight I decided to upgrade the brain to a newer version that was supposed to be more heat resistant and more robust. After installation I could not get the engine to run so I got to know Klaus pretty well. It turned out the panel was bad and he replaced it. While it took him awhile to be convinced there could be something wrong with the box and not something I might be doing wrong, he finally asked me to ship the thing back and when he discovered it was a lemon, I thought he was very gracious about the whole thing and he helped me to get things going correctly.
While the high performance engine ignitions that Klaus sells don't have the track record that the earlier ones for smaller engines do, I think it's a pretty good bet. I'm not convinced yet that there is sufficient time on these things that I would be comfortable with them as the sole source of ignition. More successful time in service might get me there.
John Barrett On Jan 12, 2013, at 4:40 AM, Richard Ogg < rogg@aol.com> wrote: How do you like the light speed Sent from ME MYSELF and I
"Anyone have any experience with electroair
ignition?"
I do. I replaced a mag
with one on the IO-540 in my ES in 2002. I had problems with it from
the start where it would start missing once the engine got hot in the climb and
right on into cruise until I had to turn it off and fly on my mag.
Working with Jeff Rose at Electroair, I replaced nearly every component (at
my own expense) outside the main board with no luck. Finally,
Jeff admitted he was having quality control issues with the units he was getting
from his manufacturer, so I gave up, removed the whole thing and replaced it
with a Lightspeed ignition.
Based upon my experience, I wouldn't recommend
Electroair to anyone. It was a total waste of time and money and
utterly unreliable in my plane.
Skip Slater
N540ES
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