RE: Austar 120" glass cessna 182 tow plane review
Hi guys, me again. Sorry I havn't posted for a couple of weeks, the family thing has taken priority but now it's back to the serious stuff.... So over the last couple of days I have been trial and retrial fitting the Emcotech electronic kill switch with 4cell 2700 NMH ignition battery and the Emcotech regulated and failsafe flight switch. And here I came up with a novel idea...seeing as the model would be fuelled through the left cowl flap, I thought why not turn the model on there as well, after all this is the business end of the plane and there is excellent airflow over not only the motor but also the ignition module. This brings me to a very important point, model aircraft ignitions do tend to get hot and heat kills ignitions as well as vibration. To overcome both of these issues the ignition is mounted ontop of the engine box away from the heat and secondly is softmounted with an undersized selftapping capscrew and silicon fuel line top and bottom of the bolt there buy "soft mounting it". The same method was also used for the power switch as this has a regulator with a heat sink on the back so you also have to allow for airflow.
So with the front end almost stitched up I turned my attention to how do I get power to the wings in a neat and fasionable way? The answer came from the automotive industry in the form of automotive soft braid that not only looks pretty trick, but also protects the cables inside from damage. The female ends of the plugs are mounted through the rear bulkhead with a bead of 732 silicon adhesive, just enough to hold them in place and the braid in turn hidden behind the verticle former to the rear of the access hatch and for the most part be out of sight.
You will see from the underside photo that I have diverted the fuel line away from the front right muffler as I felt the risk of fire was too high had this not have been done. In order to keep the mufflers in the cowl without hacking big holes in the engine box I found I could overcome this buy simply mounting the right muffler backwards and with a bit of luck and a tight elbow be able to exit the exhaust from inside the cowl......but it's going to be tight!
more work tomorrow.