petehowell
Well Known Member
I know this was probably not worth the time to make, but I had some fun, learned some stuff, and the dang thing really works!!! It is cold in St Paul!!!
And yes, I don't plan to wear this when I go thru a TSA checkpoint.......
I used an old Land's End vest, 30 ft of 24ga nichrome wire, a few feet or regular wire, some micro heatshrink, a few butt connectors, a PWM controller and some glue to make a toasty warm airplane Pete warmer for about $40!
You can buy most of the stuff on Amazon and then have fun with the basic EE equations to size the elements. The controller uses pulses to efficiently regulate the power from the 12-14V power source.
2V = barely warm,
6v = toasty,
12V = broil!
I used 5 elements in parallel and the result is just about right. The pockets are heated and there is an upper and 2 lower back elements. I'll clean up the controller and the hookup wires and it should be good to go!
Alex P is making heated boot liners with some of the wire he stole from me (don't really need all 350 ft on the roll......) Those might be next on the list!
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