The Dynon capacitive senders I originally installed for my capacitive plates didn't work. In fact, they didn't do anything other than output about 1.5 Volts no matter what the fuel level was. I'll put those $100 in the "loss" column.
Princeton Electronics makes a nicer sender. It has a PIC that employs a digital filter to linearize the output and smooth out immediate variations in fuel level due to sloshing. I purchased the 5-point version (empty, ¼, ½, ¾ and full). It's actually slightly cheaper to purchase it pre-wired.
The boxes that house the sensors are a bit large. I didn't want to place them inside the airplane because it would have been excruciating to route the cable and wires. So I decided that a good place was at the T-00006-L/R Tank Attach Brackets. I could drill holes on the inboard sides of the brackets without violating edge distances, then use a piece of aluminum to mount the senders. So that's what I did.
I wanted the senders to be easily replaced if that ever came up. So I outfitted the wires with micro Molex connectors. For that, I needed to replace the thicker 20 gauge wires that the boxes came with with smaller 22 gauge wires. That necessitated some quick solder work.
Here's the fuel gauge on my panel. Left and right readings are pretty close. Guess I'm balancing fuel load pretty well!
No comments:
Post a Comment