Mark wrote:
 >
 > Paul,
 >     - No offense taken if you deem this one too far off topic but:
 >
 >    - I've been wondering if there's not some way to get some cool

air

into

 > the cockpit without the weight and complexity of a conventional
 > automobile-style A/C system.  It's moist where I am in the

southeast, so

 > evaporative cooling is out.  I've been wondering if using ice might

not

 > work.  Bring about 5 lbs of ice cubes with me to the airplane in a

cooler.

 > Dump them in a hopper in the cocpit followed by a cup or two of

water.

The
 > water is cooled by the ice, flows into a heat exchanger in my

cockpit

 > vent/blower system, the water keeps recirculating around and

melting the

ice
 > while the air passing through cools down and blows on the

pilot/passenger.

 > I wonder if this might not bring down the temps a noticable amount

during

 > those hottest minutes of taxi and climbout to altitude.
 >    - I can work the numbers on how much heat the phase change would

"drain"

,
 > but the real question is how cool the air would be coming out of

the

vent.

 > If we figure the water is approx 34 deg F. and the ambient air is

100

 > degrees, is it reasonable to think there's a way to get 75 deg F.

air

from

a
 > reasonable size heat exchanger?
 >
 > Mark

Last year at Oshkosh there was a vendor selling what amounted to an ice

chest

with a ventilation fan that ran air up into a tube that exhausted into

the

pilot/copilot's head area. Would hold up to 20 # of ice if i recall

correctly.

Bill Schertz
KIS Cruiser #4045

The stock car guys use cool suits as I recall. Probably available
off the shelf.

Paul Lamar

I seem to remember something about a racer wanting to simply keep his head
cool :).  So he was trying to develop a helmet with a cooling system of some
kind in it.  Apparently, when a persons head is cool they can handle higher
temps for the rest of their body.  Physiologically, the body rejects more
heat to the head than anywhere else, so perhaps a small light system can be
developed to take advantage of this fact.  Maybe more expensive than it's
worth, but you all could probably add some ideas.

Norm DeBoer

 
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter.              Powered by
Linux.
ACRE NL web site. Copyright 1998-2002 All world wide rights
reserved.
http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/           
http://www.linux.org