Microlighters

Is there someone out there ho has any tips on fitting a heater on a closed cokpit aircraft. It must be light , i was thinking of using the thin airpipe used on some cars[coverd with tinfoil) and making a pickup around the cylincer and installing a dashvent of a car to get the heat to the inside of the aircraft.I fly a skyranger and it gets verry cold in my town and if i could stay hot i can fly mutch longer.

What about using a heating floor mat which can then be wired into your electrics and properly switched on your console?

They will have a heating threshold similar to an electric blanket which will stop any overheating.

Just a thought ...

Pick up hot air from around the exhaust silencer, duct it into the cockpit.

Alternatively, extend your water system to a small radiator in the cockpit. Put a bypass in the system under normal circumstances to exclude this radiator, redirect coolant through the small radiator if you need heat (ala any small car)

I fly a Cheetah and it also get chilly inside - thankfully no wind chill in there!

I wear cycling thermals underneath so I don't feel overdressed or bulky (clothing wise that is! )

In TCA aircraft the hot air for the cabin is normaly taken from the top of the engine where temps are hot anyway, but air has not been forced between the cylinders to the bottom side of the engine yet (aircooled engine Lycoming ,Continental).

The purpose of taking hot cabin air from there is two fold, one, you have a positive pressure from ram air entering the top of the engine, and two there is not much chance of getting carbon monoxide cotaminated air from the bottom of the engine into the cabin should one of the exhausts be leaking.

Hot air from the exhaust shroud is normaly used for carb heat only for just that reason.

In water cooled engines such as a Rotax Morph is quite right by recommending a small extra radiator in the cockpit to supply heat . To make such a setup works better, maybe a small shrouded adjustable speed fan to force air through the ratiator will heat the cabin area faster and allow you to adjust the flow rate of hot air.

Kind regards,

Gunter Rostek.

Sadly a heating mat/blanket system would not work on a 12 volt system. You will need about one kilowatt of heating to have an effect. This means that you will need 83 Amperes to do that. Therefore a 102 Amp hour deep cycle battery used at 80% capacity will only give you one hour of heat. The battery weighs 27.2 kg's. Using your on board 7 or 12 Ah battery will thus not be advisable.
There is a lot of waste heat that is generated by the motor that can be harvested by water to water, or water to air heat exchangers. Care should be taken not to effect the airflow around the heads, as this will have other consequences.
If you want a seperate (safer) system than to tie into your engine's cooling system, the best way to harvest heat is from the outside of the exhaust by soft drawn copper tubing. (The same they use on refrigiration/Split air con units). The idea would be to wrap said copper tubing (6 or 8 mm dia) around the exhaust. Silver solder the copper here and there to make sure it does not come loose. Get a small radiator and fan unit from an old vehicle and mount that inside the cockpit out of the way. Connect the tubing top to the radiator top and radiator bottom to copper tubing bottom. Also fit an expansion bottle to the system. Through a thermo-siphon effect (in which hot water rises) hot water then circulates between the collector and the radiator without the need of a pump. Do fit a ballvalve into the cicuit to shut the waterflow off in summer and for the best efficiency lag the copper pipes to and from the radiator with the black foam tubing that they slide over refrigiration/Split air con copper pipes. Also fit an on/off light on the dash connected to the fan motor and a battery voltage and amp meter, else you may end up with a dead battery in flight. The best heat transfer fluid is glycol for this application. Best of luck!