Regarding John Cooper's email concerning the subject, I find it hard not to don my flame suit and make a few comments.

1. Breakers are not intended to protect the load device but to protect the wiring in case of a catastrophic short circuit. A "locked up" (stalled) armature in an electric motor does not necessarily qualify as a breaker-blowing event (particularly in low voltage systems - i.e. 12V) since there can be enough resistance in the windings to prevent  breaker-blowing current flow. Circuit breakers are available with varying ranges of current/time/trip characteristics (that trip far more quickly than the 3 minutes@ 200% load mentioned by John) are are produced by a number of manufacturers (though since I retired from the business 10 years ago, I have no idea who's doing it today).

2. Yes, good idea - as long as you derive your green down-and-locked indicator power from a source that isn't turned off when you pull the main gear hydro breaker. Always good to know the gear is down and locked (three green) when you do an emergency gear drop for whatever reason.

3. Nothing wrong with the Bosch relays though I've been using the contactors provided (the crap that the factory provided) for about 1000 hours with no noticeable problem.

4. Having grown up in the aerospace industry and worked on a number of military cockpit designs, I'm a firm believer in MIL-STD-1472 for Human Factors (if I remember the number right) which, among other things specifies the color of indicator lights. Much human factors research has gone into the choice of indicator colors and what info they're presenting to the crew. A red indicator is intended to convey a WARNING - such as fire or critical failure - I would not use a red indicator as an advisory such as "gear-in-transit". Yellow or orange is more appropriate for this function. Additionally, I'm not sure why one would need to know (via John's green light) that the nose gear door is closed. I guess I prefer to see "three green" only when all three gear are down and locked.

However, as Scott often puts it: "Your mileage may vary".

Dan Schaefer
LNC2       N235SP --
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