Comments on: Single Point Failure

By: My site.

My site. — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:36:09 +0000

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By: Jeff Ward

Jeff Ward — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:01:24 +0000

Two days after reading this blog post, I was flying VFR with advisories, and a prolonged silence (and no handoff) gave me a hint that something was amiss. My headset mike plug had been touchy earlier, and now appeared to have gone south, taking both TX and RX with it. Since I was barreling towards Class B, I slowed down, squawked 7600, and started a wide orbit while I troubleshot (try the copilot jacks – still bad, etc.) So, I reached into the back seat and grabbed my spare headset – the very same headset I had briefly considered leaving behind that day to shave a little weight out of my bag! The lesson I guess is whenever I can easily add redundancy to a critical system, I will! (Oh, and I learned that your blog is a jinx!) It occurred to me later that I could have tried the cabin speaker for RX-only, and I lke to think I would have gotten to that if I hadn’t cured the problem with the spare set.

By: Vance Harral

Vance Harral — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:46:34 +0000

Here’s an interesting one: modern glass cockpit aircraft have redundant displays with reversionary modes, etc. But the few I’ve (briefly) fiddled with use a single knob to control the brightness of all the displays. Heard a tale of a bad dimmer rheostat causing all displays to go full dim (and therefore unreadable in daylight). No idea if the story was an urban legend, and perhaps all the systems have separate per-display dimmer controls somewhere… though kinda hard to set ‘em if the display itself is unreadable. But something to think about.

By: Walt Roberts

Walt Roberts — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:58:03 +0000

After losing an alternator en route, landing, having it repaired and a second failure due to a faulty regulator circuit while en route in IMC, about an hour after departure, I devised a new rule in the pre-GPS days.

When asking for a pre-flight brief and there is high likelihood of requiring an instrument let down at my destination, I always ask the briefer where the closest VMC is along my planned route. If there is an electrical failure resulting in the potential for localizer/glideslope failure, I have the option of turning the aircraft in the direction of better weather and flying out of the weather to land in VMC.

I have never had to use this option, but if there is no VMC within range of the aircraft on the flight, I consider the flight very carefully before I depart. Now, I also have a backup hand held WAAS gps and a spare set of batteries, as well as an ancient hand-held that amazingly, still works.

By: Rick Tavan

Rick Tavan — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:49:17 +0000

On my first flight with my wife after earning my private pilot’s cert, flying a rented 152, I had a total electrical failure resulting in a norad landing at my home, tower-controlled airport. Everything went by the book including some one-way comm, light signals and an emergency truck idling beside the runway. The next week I ordered a hand-held transceiver which remains in my flight bag.

By: Wes

Wes — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:45:59 +0000

On a clear night in a Piper Dakota I lost the alternator after two resets just after leaving Omaha NE. Luckily I was flying on an instrument flight plan even in clear wx and the intermittent radio was a big clue that I had problems.

We (my wife and I) landed without incedent at an alternate field with no AC lights and only a pair of flashlights to check on the gages to verify settings by feel and sound.

It turned out the next morning that a wire had come loose from the alternator and it was less than 10 minutes to fix on the ground.

I now fly with a back-up hand held radio at night at all times and in addition to the required flashlight, cary a small clipon led light that I can clip to the dash and point at the gages if I loose electical power.

I’m glad my instrument instructor had me practive flying by feel and sound during my training… I still practice from time-to-time just to keep in tune with my aircraft.

Wes Waddell
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