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-Gary dunfee is a mobile x-ray tech and
eaa member. the batteries he uses come in matched sets. when one
goes "bad" (performance drops) the whole batch gets replaced. Gary gives
us these batteries. he claims they are the highest quality made, exceeding
the odyssey batteries. they are a bit heavier because of the additional plates
inside. my hangar mate has at least three years and maybe 500hrs on
his.
I recently put a fresh one in my
plane. I flew it an hour and it worked fine. I was amazed at how
fast the prop turned over, indicating how old the prior battery had
gotten. the battery had been sitting on the shelf a year maybe before I
installed it. it showed about 11 1/2 volts then.
I flew to Camarillo last week.
about 20 miles from crater lake, smack in the middle of the cascade mountains, I
noticed my egt's shooting up 100 degrees. I pushed the mixture to full
rich, but that only slowed rate. I pulled some power and got them to
start back down. I realized my rose ignition had tripped. also I had
not shut off my strobe and wigwag lights. my volt meter showed 8
volts. I figured I had lost my alternator. I shut down
everything. I had just been dropped by flight following because of radar
coverage. my wife was very calm! I was flying the t-craft version of
the rv, no electrical system. I even shut off my gps since it had switched
to its battery. Klamath falls was less than 30 minutes. then I
noticed my voltage was up to 10 volts. interesting. I decided to
shoot for Carson city and save my 8500' of altitude. a bit later I saw 11
1/2 volts. thank god I kept the altitude. at one point Ellen say
"there's an airport below us". yeah, RNO, ceiling 8400'. so much for
my off and on gps technique. voltage was showing 13 1/2 volts now. I
tried turning things back on, and there seemed to be no problems. we got
gas at Carson city, lunch at minde, and flew to Camarillo, no problems. I
wasn't able to talk with anyone about this and flew back, 6 hrs, with no
problems, 13 1/2 volts the whole time.
so, is it possible the battery had a
charge that wore off and then went into some deep charge mode, overloading my
little nippondenso alternator? the most amps I ever saw was 20 while it
was trying to get back to the 13 volt mark. maybe leaving my lights on was
too much? has this problem fixed itself, or do I need to pull the
alternator and battery to have them tested? I used to pretty much ignore
the volt meter while flying. not anymore.
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