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What goes through your mind when your PFD goes poooof!

Peter wrote:

It does surprise me why they can’t have dual backlight inverters.

I don’t exactly know what lighting technology those daylight readable aircraft displays really use, but I guess it is not just a matter to install a spare inverter. And backlight failure is only one of many possible failure modes of such a screen. One simply cannot install a backup for every component which might fail. Last year the LCD screen of an FMS in one of the planes I fly went black in the middle of the flight. This was not a backlight failure but probably a complete power supply failure of the display assembly. The FMS itself was still working, one could have navigated by typing in blindly.

For IFR flying, some rudimentary kit of standby/backup instruments is really essential if a class display is the main source of data where everything tends to fail at once. When they retrofitted our training aircraft with glass cockpits they left one suction AI, an altimeter and a crosspointer instrument in the panel. This costs nothing because those instruments would have been thrown away otherwise.

Last Edited by what_next at 26 Jan 12:33
EDDS - Stuttgart

I would think that with steam guages it is not possible to loose all 6 instruments in one.

My point is what needs to go through your mind is to ensure you have equipment redundancy in your aircraft on the ground before you go flying.

liftvectorup wrote:

My point is what needs to go through your mind is to ensure you have equipment redundancy in your aircraft on the ground before you go flying.

That’s a little late when your PFD has gone pooof. What I missed the most are the glideslope (although I did not need it) and the VSI.

Redundancy is the first thing I thought about when I started flying with Avidyne since it does not offer a reversonary mode like the G1000 does. On the upside you do not depend on any of the two screens for navigation since you have two GNS430s or equivalent.

LFPT, LFPN

Aviator, not sure how it can be a bit late when you are on the ground before flying to think at that time what happens if my PFD goes pooof when I am flying

Aviathor wrote:

flying with Avidyne since it does not offer a reversonary mode like the G1000 does

Curious to know if any reason for the problem was found. Also what do you mean by this reversionary mode and how would it have helped you in this scenario?

Archie wrote:

Also what do you mean by this reversionary mode and how would it have helped you in this scenario?

It’s a button you push and – roughly – it sends the same info to the 2 screens: The PFD, with some added information that normally is on the MFD (for instance, Engine instruments, fuel). This way, you can have all the essential info on one screen if the other one is dark.

Oh, of course. That’s handy.

Unfortunately not available on G600…

The G600 does not present engine information anyway, and is it STC’d without steamgauge standyby? When I installed a G600, it was 100% backed up by full steam gauge, by my choice. I still used the original ASI anyway, my eye just went to it naturally.

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

@Archie wrote:


Curious to know if any reason for the problem was found.

Backlight inverter died. It was pretty obvious in flight that it was all there was to it because the screen went dark but I managed to determine that the autopilot control head still worked so the unit was not all dead.

LFPT, LFPN
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