| Author | Message | ||
     Tom Hutchison |
The following was posted by permission of John Petrie. It orginally was posted on the KIS mailing list. John's e-mail address is:pak04798@pixie.co.za John Petrie wrote: I see you're planning electric flaps - are you aware that I have a flap controller PC board which I had developed for my plane. It features 4 programmable flap positions and the user can simply, at the press of a button, select the position he/she wants the flaps at. I would love to recover some of my design/development cost and am quite prepared to make up some of these controllers and sell them as kits. Although any motor can be used to activate the flaps, I have used the motor supplied as a flap motor in the RV kits, which incidently is the same motor that is supplied for elevator trim in the Glasair kits, and even more incidently, the manufacturer doesn't recommend it for aircraft use????????!!!!!!!!! Anyhow, the point I'm making is that under full load, this motor draws 5 amps, and this is the type of current that my flap controller board has been designed to handle, so whatever motor people want to use, make sure it doesn't draw more than 5 amps at full load. The flap position sensor is simply a pot which is attached to the main flap actuator arm by means of a radio controlled airplane pushrod. The entire setup runs through a cut-off and bypass switch, enabling the flaps to be operated manually (by a toggle switch) if need be. Various people have seen mine in operation, and have been very impressed with the ease of operation, the simplicity and the fact that it removes the handbrake from between the seats, thus giving LOTS more space for other things (like centre sticks!!!!) | ||
| John Harlow |
I have installed a system in my plane that can be controlled from either stick and the pilot side has override control. I am using the stick grips with SPDT (on-off-mon on) and two DPDT relays. the system work great. |