(NOTE: Remember the couple in the Bonanza?
Well, once when I was trying to pretty up my
airplane I once attempted to burn test some
carpeting because of that story. I made a frame,
tried to meet the humidity and temperature
criteria, and when I set a Bunsen burner flame
to the carpet it went up like flash paper!
Noxious, dripping gobs of plastic… on FIRE!
They were dripping onto the floor! And I had
been testing carpet that I had seen other guys
use to cover their glareshields! Back to the
drawing board!)
The aftermarket plastics guys are frustrated
because they buy materials that have been preapproved, but still have to have their parts tested
after having only reformed the plastic sheet into
a part. This adds considerable expense to the
individual part.
Once all of the means of avoiding or
suppressing fires have been met, there is still
the possibility of a fire and this can only be
dealt with by having an extinguisher. Fires are
categorized as A, B and C, and any extinguisher
needs to be able to put out all three categories.
The best media for doing this is Halon, but
Halon has been banned by the EPA and is no
longer manufactured. This logic escapes me. I
would worry more about an immediate death or
two than saving a couple of lives but leaving a
hundred cubic feet of gas dispersing in the
atmosphere, but I am JMC, not EPA. Fire
extinguisher companies are working on other
less harmful but equally effective gasses, but
in the meantime still sell out of old inventory
and have simply kept increasing the price of the
extinguishers. What used to cost $19.95 is now
well over a hundred bucks. It creates a” bend
over but save lives” scenario.
Pilots can buy Halon extinguishers in a number
of places, but they should only install them in
very limited places. An extinguisher should be
mounted within easy reach of the pilot AND
the copilot, and a smart guy would have one
handy for the back seat passengers as well.
These are not heavy or bulky, simply because
the amount of space in a cockpit is relatively
small. Halon can comprise up to 77 percent of
the volume and not be harmfu