Hello everyone,
First an introduction. I don't know much of anything about building airplanes. I've built a couple of small wooden sailboats, including masts and sails. I've built dozens of Jet Ski and car engines, almost all heavily modified. I solo'ed in a Cessna 152 about 30 years ago and have hardly flown since.
I was reading some the ignition related discussions here and they reminded me of some ignition choices that I had to make "way back when" on my old Jet ski's.
One Jet ski in particular (Kawasaki 440), came with a small alternator and ignition coils under a heavy steel flywheel full of big magnets. I eventually replaced that with a very light weight fly wheel (1/8" aluminum disk) with a small magnet and a near by pick-up for the ignition. It was known as a "Total Loss" system. It removed several pounds of rotating mass, had a MUCH more powerful CD spark and made for an easy to start, very quick revving engine. But it would not charge the battery at all, thus the name "Total Loss." Between running the high drain of the CD system and occasionally the starting motor, keeping the battery charged was always an issue. Which is why the ignition discussions I've read here made me think about 'Total Loss" ignition systems.
I wonder if a lithium battery, and a 50 watt flexible solar panel (about 2 lbs) on top of the wing would make a good solution for charging a distributor based ignition system? If it would run without the battery, would the battery count towards the 254 lbs?
But what I really want to know is what people think about the reliability of an electronic (no points) distributor based CD ignition compared to a magneto. From what I've read so far, if you take the battery out of the equation, the magnetos seem to be the higher maintenance option. I want to have a battery anyway for other things like lights and radios, so a battery and a way to charge it are currently in my plans.
I also don't like the way, with a full case engine, the magneto winds up in just the right place for me to kick the plug wires off of it (maybe it won't be as bad as it looks in the pictures I've seen).
So what do you think about the reliability of a good CD electronic ignition system compared to a magneto?
Thanks,
Eric
