Well, the battery was dead again today. I’ve known what the problem is, but I haven’t decided what to do about it. When I was first putting together the electrical system design, I decided that I wanted the interior lights to work even if the battery master was off to help with baggage loading, boarding, etc. Later, when I settled on the dual color light and dimmer, the design required running power to the dimmer first, and then to the color selection switch and then the lights. I didn’t realize until the entire system was wired up that the dimmer leaks about 43mA even with the lights off. With a 17AH battery, that leakage current effectively drains the battery in about two weeks. I kept putting it off hoping I could find a way to preserve the behavior, but fix the current leak. I ended up deciding to just move the cabin lights to the interior light circuit on the VP-X. After doing that, my leakage current is now well less than 1mA which is more than acceptable.
I also mixed up some epoxy primer and painted the underside of the plenum.
