[NSRCA-discussion] What the heck .... starter battery charging ouch

Bob Richards bob at toprudder.com
Wed May 5 11:10:49 AKDT 2010


The "built-in" circuit breakers are typically GFCI outlets and don't offer any over-current protection, just ground fault protection. Not sure this would have helped. All outlets should be protected for over-current by a breaker in a panel somewhere. There are some newer breakers that offer arc-fault protection, that may have tripped in your case.
 
It would be interesting to diagnose the failure and determine what happened. Perhaps just a fuse in the charge jack would have prevented this.
 
I have a friend that replaced all his 3 pin charge jacks with 1/8" mini-jacks since they were easier to mount in a plane (just drill a round hole). I advised him against that, since those can short if not fully inserted. He never had a problem, though.
 
Bob R.


--- On Tue, 5/4/10, Michael Cohen <precisionaero at hotmail.com> wrote:


From: Michael Cohen <precisionaero at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] What the heck .... starter battery charging ouch
To: "NSRCA" <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 8:22 PM




Yeah, with LiPos and LiFe, I always stick around.  For NiMh, NiCd, and Pb, I usually plug it in, wait 30 seconds, and then I turn away.  The outlet did not have a built in circuit breaker either, so guess what I will be doing before the next charging event.....
 


Date: Tue, 4 May 2010 17:09:25 -0700
From: brett.terry at gmail.com
To: nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] What the heck .... starter battery charging ouch

IIRC it was a similar situation that took out all of Chip Hyde's planes a few months back.  The wall wart charger for his car "jump starter" that he was using  as a field charger caught fire and destroyed the garage.  

It is a good thing you were there to witness it and prevent further damage!  I can't count how many times over the years I have plugged in the charger and not looked back until the next day.

i am glad to hear the only damage was the smoke in the air.

Brett


On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Michael Cohen <precisionaero at hotmail.com> wrote:


I was working on my Brio out in the garage after having plugged in the wall charger for the (glow) starter battery about 10 minutes ago.  You know, us internal combustion guys need to do that once in a while.  All of the sudden, I was standing in a cloud of smoke!  I thought the Triton2EQ, that was also charging the Brio, was the culprit but somehow, the wall charger's wire's were the one's smoking!  I quickly pulled the both plugs from the outlet and got out of the garage ASAP.  Never seen that happen before!  I guess you high powered LiPo guys don't have exclusive rights to smoking batteries/charger excitement.
 
Mike C




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