The world’s most widely sold SEP (Cirrus) has all electrical instruments. So do the Diamond aircraft. And the Cessna T240 (formerly known as Lancair Columbia.300/350/400)
Some of these airplanes have a backup battery. Others have two completely independent electrical buses each with a battery.
Yes but I don’t think the OP has one of these – he operates some C150/152 types.
Peter, it’s not 100% OWT. My vacuum horizon was already displaying wobbliness when some spirited ground handling finished it off. After that it just sat at 45deg bank like an obdurate ticket attendant (in a country I’ve just come from) so clearly the ground rotation caused it to topple and jam. But the fix was definitely repair (£600) because of the autopilot connector which would have made it difficult and expensive to replace.
Another important thing – especially for cold winter days – is to let mechanical gyros spin up and get to operating temperature before taxi.
What is the heat source for the alleged warm-up, in a gyro instrument, especially one which is spun up by a load of air flowing through it and thus cooling it continually to the inlet air temperature?
Obviously every hanger rat has been telling me to put Garmin G5’s into the C150’s and I would love to do that but we simply haven’t got the money. I also hope that in the future other products will come onto the market and I do wonder if something like RCA2600 Series Digital Attitude Indicator might be better for us?
I think it will be just a case of I’ll use the closest instrument repairer to us. Keep a spare on the shelf and just except the fact that it 6 months time they will need repairing again.
Bathman wrote:
I think it will be just a case of I’ll use the closest instrument repairer to us. Keep a spare on the shelf and just except the fact that it 6 months time they will need repairing again.
Short-lived AI….Once is bad luck…twice is suspicious….points to an external factor….I wouldn’t discount repeated aggravated ground handling….what do you and your partners normally do immediately following shutdown…are you on a busy ramp where you are in the way unless you quickly move it out of the way?
What is the heat source for the alleged warm-up, in a gyro instrument, especially one which is spun up by a load of air flowing through it and thus cooling it continually to the inlet air temperature?
Isn’t the intake cabin air?
Well they were on different aircraft. All filters etc replaced and when the suction pumps reached 500 hours we replaced them with “better” ones that have an access point to check for wear.
I just think the hole suction pump system, pipes and gyroscopic instruments in this day an age isn’t very good.
And I suspect you could form a good safety case for getting rid of them.
I should add I spend about 8 hours a week frequently in IMC sat in them
Isn’t the intake cabin air?
Yes, it won’t be the outside air. The intake is normally somewhere forward of the instrument panel, so what is drawn in will be the cockpit temperature, more or less.
I just don’t see a mechanism whereby the instrument could “warm up”, with that much air going through it.
