What are magnetos & how do they work?

Another episode in our brand new flight training series from US Sport Flight Academy: 60 Second Flight Training! 60 Second Flight Training will involve quick lessons, often 60 seconds or less, on key knowledge areas that you'll need to understand for your Private or Sport Pilot Checkride!

Full Transcript:

Sam here from US Sport Aircraft bringing you a quick lesson on magnetos!

Magnetos are enginedriven units that generate electrical current. A rotating magnet excites a fixed coil of wires that send out current to the correct spark plug at the correct time.

Modern pistonengine airplanes have a dual ignition system, which means they have two sets of spark plugs, each set supplied with energy by its own magneto.

Two separate magnetos – left and right – supply the energy to the two spark plugs contained in each cylinder. Each magneto fires one spark plug per cylinder, creating an efficient, redundant system that allows the engine to operate at full power independent of the enginedriven alternator.

So unlike your car, if your alternator fails and the battery goes out, your aircraft engine would continue to run because of the magnetos.

When you do an engine runup before takeoff, you’ll perform a mag drop check to verify that both magnetos are working and falling within required tolerances. When you cycle a magneto off during the check you are anticipating a certain RPM drop associated with running the cylinder on half ignition.

If you notice a significantly higher drop in RPMs it could be a sign you are experiencing some form of carbon deposit in that spark plug gap, and you’ll want to lean out the mixture and increase power to try and “burn off” that excess carbon.

Make sure you have each and every cylinder firing and producing peak power before you fly!



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