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<\/a><\/p>\nThe connection to the red power cable that was ‘insulated’ using masking tape is shown in the foreground and yes, it is the main power supply to the switch panel for all of the circuits that the panel controlled – fuel pump, radio, strobe lights, landing light and cabin light. So quite an important lead.<\/p>\n
Imagine if that had shorted out and the radio had been lost right in the middle of an important call to ATC. And without the fuel pump, would it have been possible to start the engine? I don’t know. But just look at the state of the wiring and how haphazardly everything has been connected – obviously done by someone who hadn’t a clue what they were doing.<\/p>\n
And that big black lump on the left of the panel as viewed in the above image, what’s that all about? Here’s another shot of the panel but viewed from the front this time. <\/p>\n
The unit doesn’t seem to do anything when the master switch is on even when the button is pressed, so initially I had no idea what its function was. It turns out that there are a couple of clues – on the gauge itself there’s the word ‘elba’ and on its body the words ‘M & G Ultralight’. If you google those words you find the following LINK<\/a>.<\/p>\n It turns out that whoever originally fitted out the Savannah was a total nutter and\/or an aspiring Airbus captain with pips on his shoulders, because the unit is a fuel flow indicator. According to the link, it also tells you how much fuel is left in the tanks and how much longer it will last at the current rate of consumption.<\/p>\n What? Who on earth needs such information when flying this kind of aircraft? It’s not like a car – you can’t say, ‘Oh, fuel’s getting a bit low, we’ll drop into the next airport we pass and fill up’. That’s not how things work – you should know what your aircraft’s fuel consumption is at the rpm that you’ll be flying at and plan your landings according to the endurance you have available, with at least a half to one hour’s reserve. Then you check the airfields on your planned route to see where you need to put down for fuel.<\/p>\n In my opinion, a fuel flow indicator gadget is just that – a gadget – and has no role to play. It’s just extra, unnecessary weight, so working or not, it’ll be coming out. I see that the current cost of this one is just over 300\u20ac with a single sensor and almost 600\u20ac with two. Anyone spending that kind of money on this kind of gadget would need their brain testing I reckon.<\/p>\n And this isn’t the only indication that the original owner was a bozo – he also fitted an electric turn indicator, yet another hefty instrument that does no more than a slip ball because it’s illegal to fly an ULM\/ultralight in anything other than VFR conditions and anyone who thinks that they’re capable of doing so, even with an electric turn indicator, is in for a nasty shock. I know as I’m an IMC rated pilot.<\/p>\n But now I have all the information on this top panel that I need in order to proceed. The first thing that I have to do is fabricate a new panel front and I’ll probably do that with all new switches and contact breakers before removing the old one as they are all now pretty old and are not that expensive. It seems that I’m now being dragged into work way beyond just the fitting of the new screen, but I think that eventually it’ll be well worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here’s a shot of the back of the high-level switch panel in the roof of the Savannah’s cabin – and remember that this was AFTER I’d cut out and removed all of the unnecessary wiring! The connection to the red power cable that was ‘insulated’ using masking tape is shown in the foreground and yes, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12357"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12368,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12357\/revisions\/12368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n