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100-watt lightbulbs in the cowl flaps. All of them work, but some clearly work better than others.
Ignoring homebrew solutions, the preheat products divide themselves into two broad categories: devices you mount permanently on the airplane and those you carry around or store in the hangar for use when needed. In this article, we’ll examine aircraft-mounted systems all of them electric. In a future article, we’ll look at portable systems, both electric and propane.
Although a handful of players ply the installed preheat market, the field is dominated by two major companies Tanis Aircraft Services and Reiff Preheat Systems, both of whom have introduced incrementally new products since we last examined this topic six years ago.
As a scratchpad reference, we found that a typical installed electric preheat system costs about $500 to $600, plus another $1000 for an engine blanket, a remote-control switch of some sort and more yet if you want to preheat the cabin, too.