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What a mess! (Commander avionics refit)

Light at the end of the tunnel maybe.

EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands

Well, if you go back and look at the first image, I’d call this nice progress! Way to go, Adam!

Lovely Adam! Let the flying start I´d say :)

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Hope you don’t mind these little incremental update postings

Personally, I love them !

EBST, Belgium

That’s looking good, Adam. Great to see.
I think you will be airborne ahead of me.

EGTF, LFMD

Hi Adam,

All seems to be coming on nicely. When you are ready, I can visit and spend time taking you through the IFD systems. If you wanted to invite others I am open for demonstating/teaching. I’ll even buy lunch for everyone.

Steve Gubbins

Long 8 month wait for this moment, so combined the avionics test flight with a cross country to get her pressurization fixed… As expected, a lot of the avionics things didn’t work and as nice as it was to be back in the air, all the stuff they need to troubleshoot is going to be a drag. I was hoping to make our Commander fly-in end of Sept, but without a miracle I don’t think it will be possible. I don’t want to sit and hand fly to Kansas dodging buildups without backups… But fingers crossed.

Anyway, here’s what didn’t work:

1. IFD cuts radio out in middle of transmission sometimes and displays in yellow comm failure warning or something (wish I’d taken a photo of exakt wording). Might be an internal problem or it might be voltage spikes in the system. Someone very helpful over at the Beech Talk forum sent me a way of downloading the diagnostics of the unit, so it can be sent to Avidyne for evaluation. I just need to get back up there and do it.

2. Second Nav doesn’t work at all, doesn’t tune VOR, doesn’t do LOC/GS. Amazed this was not caught by them. Page one stuff.

3. Autopilot inop. Could have something to do with not having any gyro pressure. That a/p has pneumatic servos. This one could be painful to troubleshoot if it’s not an easy fix. But it worked when I dropped her off, so should be a reasonably easy fix.

4. All the flags on ADI all there still. And nobody knows these old Collins instruments it seems. They haven’t been able to get a straight answer from any tech person, so they keep telling me to overhaul instrument computer. But I’m not sure that’s the problem. We’ve overhauled everything else in that system and still the problem persists…

Otherwise plane ran fine, seemed pretty fast at 14500ft on a really hot day. Around 240kts. Once mechanic takes care of pressurization, I think she’ll move right along up in the FL’s. I’m hoping to see 250kts TAS.


All those flags… Nobody seems to know these instruments very well. The experience pool is drying up for older avionics. Too bad, because it’s actually a really good instrument. It has GS right next to AI, it’s electric, so it’s like a mechanical EFIS in many ways.


Standby L3 EI-500.


IFD540


You know they say turbines are twice as expensive, right?


Put new LED’s on it.

Last Edited by AdamFrisch at 28 Aug 04:18

AdamFrisch wrote:

As expected, a lot of the avionics things didn’t work

WTF ?

You paid good money, lot’s of it, including $30K OVER budget, and “expected” things to NOT work ?

What am I missing ???

ps: looks like it’s DD @ AA

Last Edited by Michael at 28 Aug 07:23
FAA A&P/IA
LFPN

Michael I have never heard of an avionics installation where everything has worked perfectly on first flight. Yep, DD at AA – wouldn’t recommend at this point.

I have heard of many, and actually all the avionics I ever bought did work on first flight (except an occasional wrong setting). Every company that has quality assurance will test the installation before they give it to the customer.

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