Drawing current

So after finishing almost all of the avionics wiring, I came across a little warning in the Garmin installation manual that their engine monitor unit may not be able to provide enough current to the boxes that determine the amount of fuel in the tanks – a bit of potential non-coolness. But I have a piece of parchment on the wall that says I know something about electrical engineering, so I decided to run a quick to check on Garmin’s warning.

Measuring fuel sender current

I popped the fuel level sender’s Deutsch connector apart, jumpered my multimeter into the power line and powered up the avionics. Voila…an accurate measurement of the sender’s current draw – 8 mA, which is significantly under the engine monitor’s max current level. Cool.