Electroair announced it has received its long-awaited STC approval from the FAA for a dual electronic ignition system for four- and six-cylinder aircraft engines. The systems are available now; costs and more details are available below to members.
There are a few things to know, including the fact that you may need a backup power supply (backup battery system or backup alternator), and if you already have a single electronic ignition system, your upgrade might mean getting another single system, then having the FAA approve your setup.
So this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be buying and installing in the next couple months. But at least this project, which Electroair has been working on since Mike Kobylik and his partner bought the company in 2005, is moving forward again.
“It’s an expansion of our existing STCs — one for a four-cylinder electronic ignition, and one for a six-cylinder electronic ignition,” Kobylik said. “Both of those STCs have been expanded to be able to allow airplanes under the current AMLs to go all the way up to two electronic ignition systems.”
Kobylik said the company has decent quantities of inventory at this point (a hundred or more) and he is hopeful there are enough materials in the supply chain as well to accommodate a lot of orders in the near term. He said he didn’t expect a supply chain issue until possible the fall, and even if that happens, it shouldn’t last long.
Plane owners will have to accommodate the other factors, including the ability to get shop time themselves, and also to achieve the backup battery or backup alternator solution required by the FAA.
Practical Scenarios
The first course of action is to figure out what happens next, which is determined by your plane’s setup.
The most-typical situations:
The rest of this article, including a look at the scenarios you might find yourself in, plus prices and installation advice and a look at the battery backup system available, can be seen only by paid members who are logged in.Have a website login already? Log in and start reading now.
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Conclusion
The company is also working toward and hoping for OEM approval (new aircraft).
Kobylik and his partner bought Electroair in 2005 and started working on their ignition system, and for over a decade has had systems for single ignitions in airplanes and has been taking this dual-electronic system to experimental aircraft for decades.
COO Aviation Director Scott Sherer, who has a single electronic ignition in his Arrow, summarized the thoughts of many pilots. “We’ve been waiting 70 years for this,” he said.
