Lucas Advert

[Triton Thrasher]

A large number of light aircraft flying today are on magnetos.

Fitting a Lucas K2F magneto to an aircraft would be pretty sound evidence of attempted murder, I reckon.

[Rex]

Good job aero mags are built to far higher specs then.

[groily]

And especially that there are always two of them Rex . . .!!

Don't know about the sorts of mags on contemporary light aircraft, but things like the BTH 4 cyl jobs on Gypsy Majors (Tiger Moths etc) or 6 cyl variants in Gypsy Sixes are not actually that far removed from their car equivalents. Screened HT bits, yup, and with proper bearings not bushes on the distributor shafts on some, and modest improvements at the contact breaker  . . . but overall not so different. Same rotating coil guts as on the cars  . . .
A bit higher up the scale, powerful aircraft from the 1920s used screened 'AC' and 'SC' versions of the BTH 'CE' inductor car magneto favoured by the likes of Lagonda and Alvis (truly beautiful instruments for beautiful cars), with 14 cylinder versions on eg the Tiger VIII Armstrong Siddeley (which was the first Brit-built two-stage supercharged engine). All wonderful stuff . . . but OTT for us natch, and I agree with TT, a K2F at 10,000 feet - no thanks!

 

[RichardL]

As an observation about our common friend/foe, it occurs to me that the “Lucas Advert” that started this conversation was just a spark to tinder (not the hook-up site) that could  have caught fire by spontaneous combustion.  For example, I think the same conversation may have ignited if the topic title had just been “Lu,” or maybe just “L.” 

Richard L. (not “Lucas”)