Century IIB autopilot fixed

I agree Dirk, if the problem is intermittent it can be masked.

In my case, the manual electric trim worked fine, but the AP did not trim. You should see the trim wheel moving when changing speed while on autopilot.
This is to avoid a badly trimmed airplane at the end of a coupled approach.

My Cessna Cardinal is stuck in maintenance for more than six month due to the seemingly difficult task to connect a dual G5 install to my trusty Century IIb. Initially we thought GAD29B to be the suspect in not feeding the correct heading signal to the autopilot. Putting in a brand new replacement unit revealed it not to be the cause of the problem.

Maybe I am a little bit impatient but considering the projected installation time has been exceeded more than twofold I would appreciate any first hand information regarding possible pitfalls and solutions. If anybody did a similar install recently please let me know what went straightforward and what had to be considered apart from the initial planning.

Having thought that an average avionics shop should be able to accomplish this task was obviously on of my bigger faults. ;-)

Big thanks to @By9468840 for providing additional documents that might help in localizing the culprit.

That’s a horrible story. 6 months? Is there nobody in Germany who understands avionics interconnections? Well, almost nobody in the UK does. @wigglyamp may be able to suggest something.

Unfortunately the „story“ unfolded in small steps. My old installation consisted of a vacuum driven AI, TC and an KI525 HSI together with a GNS430W and Century IIb with added PSS60. All working fine until removal.

Plan was to replace AI and HSI with dual G5 and hook it up to existing GPS and AP and to get rid of the vacuum system.
From doing research beforehand it seemed like an achievable task.

After removal of TC and vac pump it „suddenly“ occurred to them, that the TC is mandatory to provide information to the century AP. By then i should have been suspicious already regarding planning and communication. Unfortunately the GFC500 was not stc‘d by that time.

So vac system was re-installed (€) and the project went on. I made them aware of the fact, that as well the GNS as the G5 needed an update in their Software to be able to „talk“ to each other. Unfortunately this update was only approached four months later after having tried in vain to get things working. Now we are up the point mentioned in the initial post with having exchanged the hardware d/a converter still without success. I cannot tell you about my feelings without using expletives, so I keep it to myself.

Unfortunately the shop is too far away from my home ( 45 minutes flight time or 6 hours by train) to finalize the task after relocating my aircraft back to my and i don’t like to pick up the plane semi-finished, although from the mechanical point of view it is perfectly airworthy. I am sceptical that bringing it further away from the avionics guys reach, odds to finish in time will get even worse.

After all It seems like i am still in the process of learning aircraft ownership the hard way.

Clearly the installer hasn’t got a clue, and it is a pity that learning aircraft ownership involves learning that so many people don’t have a clue. This has been a tragedy for quite a lot of people.

My Arrow II AP is the Autocontrol III, do you think that guys at SIBA can handle it ?

@By9468840

you are right, sorry for causing confusion, I mixed up TC and AI. The vac AI is the one that needs to stay, at least until finally being able to install the GFC.