Kitfox Series 7 Super Sport - Show Me Fox

[Jason Murphy]

10 ga is overkill for the pitot heat. You will probably have difficulty terminating that large of a wire. I think 14 ga is commonly used with a 15 A fuse or breaker.

Yeah yeah yeah. They've always worked well for me as long as I don't ask them to do something they weren't designed for. Just kidding with you Harlan

Yup. The Stewart brothers who started the company still live close by. Really good guys who are willing to share their experiences.

These comments are right on Jason. I used 14ga on mine and it works perfectly as far as I can tell. I say that because the controller varies how much current actually goes to the heater based on OAT. I'd be really surprised to ever see the system ask for full current but even if it did, 14ga is good. While I don't expect to fly mine in that kind of cold where I need a lot of heat, my training was that if you flew into rain - turn on the pitot heat. Doesn't take a lot of heat to deal with the rain but still helps keep water out of the system.

Like Alex, I love how your kids are involved in the build. The time spent now are the memories you have later. Those are priceless.

Geek

Agree. 10ft of 14AWG will have ~0.025Ω of resistance. At the full 10A, you'll see 0.25V drop at the pitot tube. Insignificant.

10ft of 10AWG will have ~0.01Ω of resistance and 0.1V drop at 10A. It will weigh about 2.5 times as much as 14AWG.

I wanted to thank everyone for the incredible responses and discussion, I would like to discuss the topic a little further and gather additional thoughts from you.

For those of you who are running the 14 ga wire how are your routing the wire?

I have not actually measured the total length of the wire run but I estimate if you ran the wire down the spar tube and back to the pitot probe you would have at least 18 ft and that doesnt count running the wire through the cabin to the power source. P. 75 of the G3x install manual calls for 10 g wire for distances of 20 to 30 ft.

I purchased the unregulated pitot so unfortunately I do not have anything which would decrease the demand of the heater. Perhaps Stein would work with me on this and I could trade up.