edg
Senior Heliman
Location: San Francisco, CA
| Yes, I Believe it is Electronic Control Unit.
It also comes with a GSU -- Ground Support Unit. This plugs
into the ECU and gives you a readout as well as allowing programming
and manual iginitiion.
The ECU controls and monitors a number of the turbine operations. It's basically wired into the kerosene pump, propane valve, glow plug, starter motor, Rx and finally the Turbine itself (I would assume the latter is a an exhaust temp probe and tachometer). While it looks like a big tangle of tubes and wires, the basic operation is pretty easy to understand.
There's kind of 2 systems: starting support and running. At start, the ECU spins up the turbine to low RPM via the start motor. It then opens the propane (actually propane/butane mix) valve to send the gas to the turbine and sends a current to the glow plug. foomf. The gas ignites and the turbine spins up. The process has to become self-sustaining so that the compressor, which also runs off the spinning turbine, is at high enough speed to force air for the kerosene combustion. At some point the propane value is shut off and the kerosene fuel pump is started.
The Turbine continues to wind up to it's running RPM. It's not until the RPM is reached that the ECU gives operational control of the turbine to commands from the Rx. I assume exhaust temp is constantly monitered and a shutdown will occur if temp is too high.
-edg- |
