Thread: Batteries?
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Old 11-07-2012, 02:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer View Post
Something just occurred to me...do aircraft have batteries? Helos or fixed wing...there'd be a source of spares right there. I mean, for vehicles, anyway.

Plus as the number of operable vehicles dwindles, units will scavenge what they can from the hangar queens and thousands (millions!) of abandoned civilian vehicles...
I don't know about jets, but I'd bet that most of don't -- most jets require power from an external APU on a cart or small vehicle to start their engines. A lot of helicopters do have batteries -- and they're huge (a Black Hawk's batteries weigh about 70 pounds apiece, and I believe that the Black Hawk uses two of them).

Fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraft sometimes have batteries and sometimes not. Have you ever seen footage of ground crews for World War 2 bombers turning the propellers by hand? They're sort of "winding up" the engines -- developing a charge in a part of the engines (I think it's a capacitor, but don't quote me on that). Smaller prop-driven aircraft are more likely to have their own batteries, and I'll bet they're pretty hefty too. A turboprop is most likely like a jet -- it would probably require external power to start.
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