I know that I'm on the left side of the Atlantic and everything, and so lack the English sense of humour so valuable to appreciate many of these posts in context, but;
The pitot heater is supposed to keep your ASI working. It stops you losing control and crashing.
Really?
In any plane I'm flying,
I stop me from loosing control and crashing, the ASI provides just a bit of information, which at times is helpful...
alternater is fairly far down the list compared to ASI
Well, yes, I agree, most of the time, but I have certainly flown many long legs over unwelcoming territory where if I had to loose one, I'd much rather loose the just ASI, than the alternator. During a long leg of IMC in ice, if you loose the ASI, you loose airspeed information. Loose an alternator, and you'll loose the pitot heat (so ASI),
plus a whole bunch of other equipment you'd like to have, once the battery goes flat.
But, as I said near the beginning, the use of pitot heat, and checking the function of an alternator, are, in my opinion, not closely associated.
Pilot DAR