any merit in running dual battery packs ?

[Bob Richards]

Bill,
 
OTOH, remember the Rutan Voyager? Two centerline engines, the front engine was to be shut off and feathered after it was no longer needed. Rutan wanted to leave the electric starter off, since it would not be needed once it left the ground. The engine maker (Teledyne?) convinced him to keep the starter on, "just in case".
 
Halfway around the world, a fuel managment problem caused the rear engine to momentarily quit, and the nose-down glide prevented the fuel pickup to draw fuel again to the rear engine. The front engine was started again, and once level flight was established the fuel began flowing again to the rear engine. (Best recollection of the story that I can remember from reading Dick Rutan's book).
 
You can never think of all the ways redundancy can pull your a** out of the fire!!
 
Bob R.


Bill Glaze <billglaze at triad.rr.com> wrote:
In those days a twin engine airplane couldn't maintain flight on just one engine, in most cases.  So, in his book, (We) Lindbergh stated that twin engines "gave twice as much chance of an engine failure."  The only thing two engines did, was to insure that you had enough power to make it to the crash scene.
Bill Glaze
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