Battery uplift

So, as the colder days begin.. the battery had decided to play up and starting has become a slight ‘fingers crossed’ affair !

Way back when I put the first battery in i selected a motorcycle unit that fitted neatly into the TLAC kit supplied tray.

This was mounted in front of the passenger seat but, on getting around to weight and balance, I realised I needed a lump of lead in the tail to get CofG in right place.

Having made a small mount for the lead and fixed it.. the LAA decided they didn’t like a lump of lead in the tail that could head forwards in a nose in crash so rejected my plan.

I then realised that the lead weighed the same as the battery I had, so had the brainwave of removing this pointless excess weight and putting the battery in the tail with a proper supplied battery mount. So, nice and secure but hey presto I didn’t need any additional weight to achieve equilibrium.

This meant I needed to run quite long power cables up to the starter solenoid and also an earth to the engine… and this, over time, proved problematic as the power loss over some 4-5m of cable was evidential

I started to look at the lead into the fin post idea but then hit on the idea of using the priginal front battery location AS WELL and connecting the batteries together… in series..

This gave superb starting and you just had to breathe on the push button starter and boom into life !

Roll forward through the years ..and motorcycle batteries aren’t great. They definitely have a shelf life after which you simply need to cycle them.

I checked back on the one that i had in the front yesterday and it’s 5 years old !

The £100 ish to replace far outweighs the disappointment of a none start !

The tail one i believe was done after I got to the UK and, the last time I did it, I made a small cut out Oratex panel that will allow easier replacement (the whole side of the aircraft being one complete piece of Oratex).