Few things are more annoying than walking out to your Cessna or Piper to find that it won’t start. It’d be nice if you had a ground crew to take care of the problem. Unfortunately, most private plane owners don’t enjoy that luxury. Fixing the problem is easy if you know what to look for and have the proper equipment on hand for jump starts.
Assess the Situation First
Before you try a jump start, rule out other potential problems such as fuel line leaks. If you’re pretty sure you’re simply looking at a dead battery, you don’t necessarily need to grab an external booster just yet. Try a few hand starts if you feel comfortable doing so. Obviously, this approach is out of the question for turboprops.
Locate Your Battery or Terminal
If a hand start won’t do the trick, you’ll need to jump your battery. Whether it’s a gas turbine start up or a jump start on a traditional prop, you’ll need to find the battery or the charging port. It should be located either in the baggage compartment or the engine compartment. Alternatively, there’s always the electrical terminal located on the nose.
Choose Your Electricity Source
If you’re jumping from an automobile battery, its probably best to use a model with a higher CCA rating. If your plane uses a 24V system, you’ll need two batteries wired in series. A ground support booster should give you the option of up to 28 volts if needed. Make sure that the booster has a NATO aviation plug.
Wire It Up & Fire It Up
To jump your plane from an automobile battery, wire up the connections as you would with a car-to-car jump start. Connect dead positive to live positive and then live negative to ground. If you do have an auxiliary ground booster, just pop the aviation plug into the terminal forward of the pilot’s door and key it up. It’s really that simple.
Don’t Let It Happen Again
Once you’re in the air, take some time to consider how to best avoid this scenario in the future. At the very least, you can make a dead battery less of a hassle. The easiest way to do this is with auxiliary ground battery packs or boosters. Buy a model that can go up to 28V to cover all eventualities.
Quality Boosters Make All the Difference
Owning a booster is just common sense for any airplane owner. They pretty much pay for themselves after a few incidents. At a minimum, rural airstrips should be equipped with a high-end model that can deliver dependable juice when dead batteries become an issue. Ultimately, it’s one of the smartest investments that a plane owner can make.
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