Al
Hate to continue to display my ignorance but what is a Schottky
diodes. When it comes to electronics I’m as dumb as a stump.
Bob K
From: Rotary motors in
aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of Al Gietzen
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 5:42 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: EC2 20B Injector Power Circuits
Joe;
You are right. We discovered this crossfeed issue some time
back. Is applies only to the 20B version as the 13B has separate drivers
for each set. Install Schottky diodes in the circuits for each
injector. Tracy is aware of this, and has installed the diodes in his as
well.
Al
-----Original Message-----
From: Rotary motors in aircraft [mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of Joe Ewen
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 3:20 PM
To: Rotary motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] EC2 20B Injector Power Circuits
I have been testing my wiring harness from
the EC2. I found a behavior that I did not expect. The manual
drawing (EC2 manual) show a single injector supply that splits at the Injector
primary and secondary disable switches. On my installation, I have 2
separate feeder circuits, supply Primary comes from battery 1, and supply
Secondary comes from battery 2. I did this for redundancy. If I had
a failure such as a short to ground in either circuit, its related overload
should trip, but the other circuit should remain active.
While testing the injector circuits, I
noticed what I would term an abnormality. With both injector disable
switches in the enable position, I turned on the power for the primary circuit
(I have LED indicators on all circuits that annunciate power present) and the
secondary circuit also showed power present even though the power switch for
the secondary circuit was off. The same is true when the secondary
circuit is engaged and the primary is off.
Initially this led me to think I had miss
wired something in the circuit. After checking out the wiring, I found no
issues. So I took a closer look at the wiring diagram in the
manual. It turns out the power was being back feed through the injectors
to the opposite circuit. On the 20B version of the EC2, the injector
control lines for each rotors injectors are junctioned going into the
EC2. For example the Rotor 1 Primary and Secondary control lines are
junctioned into a single input point at the EC2.
I can see several situations where this may
lead to undesirable operation. For example, if the Primary circuit had a
hard short to ground, it would take out the primary circuit's overload (CB or
Fuse.) Since the primary and secondary circuits are electrically
connected on the control line, the other circuit would also trip. Another
situation that could occur is a medium to high resistance short. Current
would then flow uncontrolled through the unaffected circuit's injector to the
affected circuit's injector then to the resistance short. This could keep
both injectors on 100%. While this situation is unlikely, it seems
possible.
I believe the 13B version uses separate
control lines for each injector, so this in not likely to be an issue on the
13B version.
It appears that isolation diodes are needed
to prevent these possible problems. Before making any changes I have to
look the circuit over more closely, as well as a call to Tracy on the next
service day. My question to the group, especially anyone with a 20B, is
am I looking at this wrong?