Yep - the best protection is to have and TEST a fuel cutoff valve.  No fuel = no fire, and fiberglass doesn't burn well on it's own.

If you have good engine gages, you should be able to detect a fire by "unusual readings" (not to mention smoke).  However, you can install temperature senders to sense unusually high temps and report it as "fire."

Military systems require that you cut off the fuel first and then "blow the bottle."  Because of the high air flow, it takes a large bottle (heavy, bulky) and it must blow all at once to "snuff" the fire.

Cheers,

Bill

Lancair wrote:

Valin,

 

I discussed the application with an engineer at a fire estinguisher company.  He said that this kind of equipment would work fine in a boat because the Halon would be contained below deck.  In an aircraft at 150kt+ and a fire under a cowling that was purposly designed to transit a lot of air, the Halon would be blown overboard and likely do no good.  It would work if you could get the plane onto the ground before blowing the bottle.

 

Robert M. Simon

ES-P N301ES

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From: Valin & Allyson Thorn [mailto:thorn@starflight.aero]
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 8:19 AM
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Subject: In Flight Engine Fire Extinguishers

As part of our risk management strategy, we want to install an engine fire extinguishing system in our Legacy under construction.  We’ve zeroed in on this Halon 1301 based system from Safecraft.  See screen shot from Aircraft Spruce’s website:

 We’d appreciate comments and advice from the community regarding choice of systems and installation recommendations.  Some specific questions are:

                   ·         Would a single 5 lb bottle provide enough Halon concentration to extinguish an in-flight fire?

·         Do we need to route discharge lines to the cowling inlets to ensure we’re getting the Halon throughout the compartment when discharged for a fire?

·         Has anyone had an engine fire that was successfully extinguished in flight?

·         We’re trying to eliminate mechanical connections to the instrument panel to make it easy to remove for maintenance (eg. No push pull cables, etc.).  Anyone have experience with setting up for electrically actuating a system?

·         Etc.