PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Landing lights on or off during start for longevity in piston singles?
Old 21st Nov 2007, 15:49
  #5 (permalink)  
P.Pilcher
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: U.K.
Posts: 805
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
If you have ever dropped a handlamp or knocked a lit table lamp off its table then you will know that a tungsten filament heated to well over 1000 deg.C is much, much more fragile than a cold one. Thus if you want to reduce your operating costs never have a landing/taxy light on when starting a piston engine because of the severe vibration generated as the engine first fires up.

I can remember years ago our engineers moaning about the poor life and high replacement cost of our landing/taxy sealed beam units on school A/C. Simple solution: visit the local autospares place: The equivalent car sealed beam units were a direct replacement, lasted for ages and cost a fraction of that of the approved aviation spare!

P.P.
P.Pilcher is offline