Netters,
After my first landing approach on my first flight I was really glad I installed a speed brake. Well, after a flight today I'm ELATED that I installed a backup electrical system for my fuel pumps. I have no header tank and an electrical system failure means glide mode in 30 or 40 seconds. (Mark Jones, are you listening? ) After takeoff and about halfway to my destination , about a 15 minute flight, I noticed all the electrical gauges on my panel had needles that were flopping back and forth. I had a bad connection somewhere that was dropping out my main elect. buss. I shut down all the switches and kicked on my backup battery to the fuel pumps. I had noticed it in time that the engine never burped. I did some switch flipping and panel tapping on the decent to my destination and the main buss came back on line. Needless to say I left the fuel pumps on the backup battery. After landing I did some troubleshooting and could not duplicate the failure. After much consideration I decided to fly the KR the 15 minutes back to it's home airport and investigate the problem there. I took off and climbed out with the pumps on the backup battery even though my main buss was working. At altitude I switched the pumps back to the main buss to save the backup battery although it should be capable of running the tanks from full to empty when fully charged. My problem appears to have been a broken spade connector on the back of one of the circuit breakers. It has been repaired but while my battery is out I'm planning to relocate it to the front side of the firewall to move my C.G. forward a bit more. I will leave the battery holder and battery box, that is located on the backside of the firewall in the area where most KR's have a header tank, and use it to hold a quart or two of oil (still in the cans of course) and maybe a small set of tools I'd like to have with me when away from home base. I guess it would be expecting too much to have worked on something for 13 years and not have screwed something up. :-) Larry Flesner
