Turning on an engine pre-heater remotely

[vigilant104]

Winter is coming, and with it the cold temps that are tough on airplane engines. Engine pre-heaters are essential at lower temperatures, but I wasn't looking forward to arriving at the hangar a couple hours early just to turn one on. And, the folks who own my hangar won't allow renters to use timers or to leave a heater on all the time. To make things easy I installed a commercially-available switching circuit that allows me to turn on my engine pre-heater with a phone call. It's not much of a technical accomplishment, but for anyone who might be interested, the write-up is at the Sonex Builders and Owners Foundation site at : http://sonexfoundation.com/Files.html. Thanks to Eric S for posting it.

This isn't an ad, and I've got no links to the companies that sell the items described.

There's a lot of useful stuff, there, too.

[Chris9183]

That's ingenius...really really cool

[vigilant104]

It was a simple project. I used it yesterday: called to turn it on when I was having breakfast on a 40 deg F morning, the oil temps were 70 deg F when I arrived 2 hours later. A guy in my EAA chapter (building an RV-7) is building one of these switches so he can call and turn on his big air compressor and get the tank filled before he arrives at the hangar (so he doesn't have to listen to it drone on). I thought about plugging a coffeemaker into mine so there would be hot coffee AND a warm engine when I showed up, but I think the mice would just use it as a hot tub before I arrived.

[Chris9183]

It was a simple project. I used it yesterday: called to turn it on when I was having breakfast on a 40 deg F morning, the oil temps were 70 deg F when I arrived 2 hours later. A guy in my EAA chapter (building an RV-7) is building one of these switches so he can call and turn on his big air compressor and get the tank filled before he arrives at the hangar (so he doesn't have to listen to it drone on). I thought about plugging a coffeemaker into mine so there would be hot coffee AND a warm engine when I showed up, but I think the mice would just use it as a hot tub before I arrived.

:lol:

I wish I could afford to keep my Sonex in the local hangar after I build it, but they charge $450 a month plus your firstborn to keep your plane there, so I'm gonna be doing a lot of wing removal/trailering from home to the airport. I don't mind it though, I prefer to have my plane here at home in my garage/enclosed trailer anyway.