Radar Contact
Pattern Altitude
I don't post most of my weekly videos here but I thought this one would be good for discussion and Jaime gives a shout out to POA's own @kayoh190
When I first bought the plane it had a fairly original 6 pack. The primary AI was vacuum driven and the autopilot ran off that. The back up was a 40+ year old turn and bank indicator that even in level flight just toggled back and forth left and right of center. I was a relatively early adopter of the G5 and then had the G5 HSI installed and recently the IFD550 (with AHRS).
A couple weeks ago enroute to our Gulf Coast Swing vacation I experienced a dual vacuum pump failure. I was on an IFR flight plan but was VMC. Unbeknownst at the time, my surface de-ice switch became faulty and that resulted in an un-commanded full inflate of the boots with no deflating allowed. My pumps were staggered in years and hours but the lowest time one was about 4-5 years and maybe 300 hours or so. Shortly after this happened, my pumps failed within 10 minutes of each other. If this would have happened a few years ago while IMC, it would have been a full blown emergency for me with the old T&B that I had.
I guess I have a few thoughts about this. 1) I love the new affordable tech that has made our cockpits safer. 2) If you don't have advantage of this in the plane you fly IMC, make sure your backup (T&B, Turn coordinator, etc) is up to the challenge if called upon to help keep you upright. 3) Whatever equipment you have on your plane, make sure you are comfy with partial panel and fully understand how it all operates.
In the end this was fairly tame and after speaking with my mechanic, we were able to continue our trip legally.
When I first bought the plane it had a fairly original 6 pack. The primary AI was vacuum driven and the autopilot ran off that. The back up was a 40+ year old turn and bank indicator that even in level flight just toggled back and forth left and right of center. I was a relatively early adopter of the G5 and then had the G5 HSI installed and recently the IFD550 (with AHRS).
A couple weeks ago enroute to our Gulf Coast Swing vacation I experienced a dual vacuum pump failure. I was on an IFR flight plan but was VMC. Unbeknownst at the time, my surface de-ice switch became faulty and that resulted in an un-commanded full inflate of the boots with no deflating allowed. My pumps were staggered in years and hours but the lowest time one was about 4-5 years and maybe 300 hours or so. Shortly after this happened, my pumps failed within 10 minutes of each other. If this would have happened a few years ago while IMC, it would have been a full blown emergency for me with the old T&B that I had.
I guess I have a few thoughts about this. 1) I love the new affordable tech that has made our cockpits safer. 2) If you don't have advantage of this in the plane you fly IMC, make sure your backup (T&B, Turn coordinator, etc) is up to the challenge if called upon to help keep you upright. 3) Whatever equipment you have on your plane, make sure you are comfy with partial panel and fully understand how it all operates.
In the end this was fairly tame and after speaking with my mechanic, we were able to continue our trip legally.