Glow starter

[Stew]

Hi all.
Never having used one, do any of you recommend any particular make of clip-on glow plug battery?

Stew.

[Shaun]

Stew, they basically all come from China so are all averagely average.

Never had one that didn't do its job other than having a cheap nasty nicad or nimh in but if it looks too cheap then I wouldn't buy it.

Shaun.

[Martin]

I used to use the ones that take a single 'C' size NiCad or NiMH battery



But having found it increasingly difficult to buy good replacement cells, I swapped to using LiPo batteries - which I've always got dozens off, for my battery powered planes.

You need a dropper resistor or other limiter with a LiPo to get the voltage across the actual gloplug somewhere in the 1.5V - 2.2 V range. I chose to make my dropper to suit 2-cell LiPos (I've got lots of those, but don't tend to carry individual single cells).

It has an LED to indicate that it's connected (and the gloplug hasn't burnt out).

The two big resistors are 4.7 ohm 25-Watt (10-Watt would be okay) and the small one in line with the LED is 33 ohms.

I bolted the big resistors to a bit of aluminium plate, just for neatness, really. The resistors and plate do become hot if you leave them connected for a long time (total dissipation is about fifteen watts) but they're normally only connected for a few seconds at a time.

[Stew]

Thanks chaps. Mucho appreciato.