Innis Cunningham writes: > Seeing how the ampere draw and the voltage would under normal > conditions hardly move (except maybe at start). The information could be > programmed into > the electrical supply system.I assume we are dealing with light A/C > here as I doubt anyone flying a 737 would see an amp metre in their > life time.If we are talking about failures then would they not be better > handled by a random event generator.After all I guess you are going to > have a random event generator tell you the instrument is drawing excess > current and then pop the C/B.Why not just tell the elecrical system to pop > the circuit breaker. > > To be able to have circuit breakers pop automatically (lower priority). > > Once again random event generator > > To be able to have things start on fire when they are really overloaded > (really low > >priority.) > > And again random event generator. > > > >Curt.
Ok, how about a 4th reason. :-) Because I'm currently working on a project that would benefit from having the current draw modeled as realistically as possible. And actually, you get quite a variety of ammeter variation depending on if you are running battery only, have an alternater fail, have the alternator working, have the engine running, and or have a lot of devices and lights going. I know this is probably comparing apples to oranges, but back when I was young and daring, I drove my car about 150 miles with no alternator belt. I survived by making sure every possible electrical item was turned off. If I even hit the turn signal or hit the brakes (brake lights) the engine would sputter and nearly die. Anyway, for a C172, and for pilot training, it might be handy to do various electrical system failures. They don't put an ammeter on the panel just because they had extra room and it was cheaper than a tracheon radiation indicator. Alternator failures can happen, and the ammeter (if you are paying attention to it) can give you an early warning of a problem that would perhaps give you time to find a close airport and get on the ground before your lights, radios, and entire electrical system fails. I heard a story about a guy who had to enter a busy pattern, late in the day, with no radios, no lights, (no flaps?). There's no reason an aircraft building would *have* to model the electrical system in this detail. We provide a generic configuration for people who don't want to worry about it ... Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities curt 'at' me.umn.edu curt 'at' flightgear.org Minnesota http://www.flightgear.org/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
