Vance Harral

I have zero criticism of this attitude. Completely understand. That said, one of the frustrations about flying on the front range of the Rockies is that AIRMETs for moderate turbulence are nearly an everyday occurrence in the spring and fall, as the jet stream migrates north of and south of the middle of the country, respectively. High winds at altitude running over the tops of the mountains bring wicked, katabatic, downsloping winds. So if you decide to stay on the ground any time there's an AIRMET for moderate, you're going to be grounded for weeks at a time. After a while, there will finally be a nice day, but then you get to contend with the pent-up demand from hundreds of marginally current pilots who have been waiting weeks for that perfect day to go weekend warrioring. I hate to be a cynic about it, but after a couple of decades flying here, I tell people not to be fooled by that "300 days of sunshine a year" advertisement when it comes to aviating. There are a ton of VFR-but-very-unpleasant flying days in Colorado. You either live with the bumps, or spend a lot of time on the ground. It's particular frustrating when I have primary students trying to learn to fly in late winter/early spring. There are so many days when the bumps are bad enough to impede their ability to learn, and I'm inclined to reschedule. But if we only fly on really nice days, they'll go so long between lessons that there is considerable backsliding. I'm probably grumpier about this than usual today, because my own (partnership) airplane is currently stranded a mere 15nm from it's home in KLMO. At the conclusion of our annual at KBJC on Friday, it simply wasn't prudent to fly it home due to high winds. Today's not a good day either, 50+ gusts at KBJC. We'll try again tomorrow. At some point it'll be "safe enough", but likely still unpleasant. Just gotta hold out until late May or so, when things usually settle down for a few months.

Thanks for the replies, all. I have a message out to LASAR about this. Local thoughts are that an AN screw with a drop of blue loctite fits the bill, but I'll wait for further info before flying. It's not hard to understand why some extra caution is warranted here. If these screws back out in flight, they're likely to enter the intake path to the fuel servo. Just one more reason why I've come to believe ram air is generally more trouble than it's worth, even on the older birds with the less optimum cowl and intake path.

Posting this in Vintage Mooney discussion because the screw in question is used to attach the ram air door to its control linkage in older Mooneys. But the question is somewhat general. The fastener spec'd in the IPC for this application is an "NK526–1032R5". Good old AN526-1032 machine screws are a dime a dozen (well, a little more expensive nowadays, but not much). R5 is a slightly-unusually-short length, but not rare. But the "NK" specification confounds me. "NK526" doesn't turn up anything in searches at Aircraft Spruce or Chief or Skygeek, and a more general web search on "NK screw" returns ambiguous results. One of my airplane partners thinks this is a Mooney-specific part, but that seems hard to believe. I can easily thread an AN526-1032 screw into the hole that's supposed to receive this NK526-1032 screw, so they're obviously similar. The component the screw threads into isn't a Tinnerman nut or other locking fastener, just a tapped hole into what appears to be common steel. So my guess is that an NK screw is "special" in some way that makes it less likely to back out on its own. But that's just a guess. Anyone know what this kind of screw this is, and - more importantly - where to buy one? I stripped the head on one of the three screws used to hold the ram air door on, and thus need a replacement.

That's really interesting. There is no such prohibition in MANUAL 106 for the C/E/F/G models, though on a careful read just now it does prescribe using the manual emergency extension crank to move the gear to partially-retracted positions. The J and later models have the no-back-spring type actuators, correct? If so, I wonder if this prohibition on using the breaker as a switch is related to that, or if Mooney just decided using the breaker as a switch while the gear is moving is generally not a good idea. Wonder if there was an "incident" at some point.

For those not already aware... if you swipe down from the top right corner of the iPad (no matter what application is running), you can lock display rotation for the entire iOS system, such that nothing ever rotates, on any page, in any app. I just verified the bug @MikeOH described, but the reason I hadn't noticed it is that I keep screen rotation for the entire system locked, rather than just for individual plates. If that meets your needs, it's a good workaround.

I just pull the circuit breaker a second or two after the retraction cycle starts. We do this every time we need to remove the landing gear actuator for SB M20-190B. Have done it dozens of times over the past 17 years and have not (yet) come to any grief by doing so.

This particular airplane has lived "at altitude" for about 20 years, even the previous owner lived in the Utah high country. I'm not concerned the fuel servo isn't set up properly if that's what you're getting at. In particular, I have no desire for the fuel servo's idle adjustments to be set up more lean than they are, just because the home 'drome is 5050 MSL. I want it to idle well at sea level, and it's simple to lean (aggressively) for taxi at home, which we do.

Those data points are appreciated, but I'm not sure what to say about it. It's a common occurrence at my home drome, and not just in my Mooney, but other fuel-injected airplanes. One possibility is all of us have small induction leaks, and I'm not arrogant enough to rule that out entirely. But induction leaks are relatively straightforward to check for in flight (see https://resources.savvyaviation.com/in-flight-diagnostics/), and my airplane doesn't exhibit the differential EGT delta discussed there. The only other thing that comes to mind is that my home drome is 5050' MSL, higher than many of the participants here on the forums. The air is less dense here, and therefore less capable of cooling, but I freely admit that's kind of a thin argument. Might carry more weight if I was in Leadville or similar, but mile high isn't *that* high. All I can say is that I'm pretty confident a bit of popping and griping from a fuel-injected engine whose cylinder feed lines run right over the top of the cylinder, while idling along the taxiway at lower power, even for extended periods of time, doesn't strike me as a "this is unsafe and must be fixed" kind of problem.

While I realize this isn't practical for all pilots, the best thing I've ever done to minimize my own checklist errors, is to become a CFI and watch other pilots commit checklist errors. This doesn't make me immune from errors, of course - sometimes exactly the same errors I observe and corrected in others. But it has taught me a couple of things. Fundamentally, there are only two types of checklist error, and they occur whether using paper, tablet, mnemonic, "flow", or whatever. Type 1 is missing an item entirely. Type 2 is non-performance of an item, even though you said and/or thought about it. While everyone can commit Type 1 errors, low-time pilots are more prone, and hence I've seen a lot of them as an instructor. I can say with high confidence that the more detailed the checklist, the more likely a pilot is to commit an error in using it. A lot of low-time pilots - myself included a while back - get this understandable impression that the more detail a checklist has, the less likely one is to miss doing something important. Counterintuitively, the opposite is true. The more details - and therefore physically longer - a checklist is, the more likely the pilot is to miss something on it. The propensity for error is multipled about 10x if the checklist is so long that the pilot has to flip pages, or even just move to a new column on the same page. As an example, I give you the POH for the ubiquitous Cessna 172M. This otherwise fine document contains a set of Normal Procedures checklists that are often copied and laminated for rental pilot usage, and all of the "Starting Engine", "Maximum Performance Takeoff", and "Before Landing" checklists are split across two pages (if you look at later Cessna POHs, the factory corrected this). Some aftermarket checklists have similar splits; and lots of homegrown ones get this way because the well-intentioned author put so much stuff on them that individual sections won't fit in a single page or column. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone miss the last item on page/column 1 or the first item on page/column 2. Even when the list is one page/column/screen/whatever, however, pilots are highly prone to miss something once the list gets much beyond a half dozen items or so. I've tried teaching folks that they must keep their left thumb on the item they're performing to avoid skips, but this turns out to be impractical. Electronic checklists try to mitigate this by requiring you to click an item to actually "check it off". But it turns out this has problems too - anyone who's used a touchscreen device can tell you how easy it is to inadvertently click something you didn't mean to. My conclusion based on these observations? Simpler is better, almost to a fault. Sure, you should turn on your landing light before takeoff, but the likelihood of that killing you is essentially zero compared to other truly critical pre-takeoff checklist items, like flight controls free and correct. So maybe the landing light gets consolidated into "Lights PRN", or even not mentioned at all. However you achieve it, simplify and consolidate. Fewer items, with a focus on real killers. Group noncritical items together the way midlifeflyer does above, e.g. taking off in an Ovation with an unlatched cabin door or open pilot vent window is not going to kill you unless you panic, so one item for all of them. I maintain several checklists for airplanes I fly, and my rule is that all normal procedures must fit on 4.25" x 11" (half letter size cut lengthwise) card stock, with every pre-takeoff item on the front, and all takeoff/landing items on the back. All emergency procedures must fit on a second 4.25" x 11" card, which I usually print on differently colored stock. I happen to like this half-letter-size format, but that's not the important takeaway. My point is to reduce and simplify - till it "hurts" - and forcing yourself into limited space is an effective way to do that. As for Type 2 errors, this is a lot tougher nut to crack, and I really don't have a good answer. But I'll say that over time, I'm coming to the same conclusion as midlifeflyer that "challenge and respond" may counterintuitively be less safe, because it makes one prone to Type 2 errors. Again, I can't tell you how many times I've watched a pilot confidently say something like, "Carburetor heat OFF!" while staring at and in some cases even touching a carburetor heat control that is obviously set ON. I actually do compose my checklists in a challenge/respond format, but the more refined they get, the less prescriptive they are, with many items saying AS REQUIRED rather than prescribing the "correct" setting. Amongst students, this makes things go slower in the first few lessons, but I really do believe it reduces Type 2 errors in the long run. Think about this for a minute: what if everything on your pre-takeoff challenge/respond checklist had a response of PRN? Flight controls? PRN. Mixture? PRN. Lights? PRN. I think this forces you to actually think about what setting is appropriate, and set/verify it. I don't know of any studies that formally support my thinking, but it's certainly the way I've started to lean over the years. I'm just a hobby instructor, not in the class of a Don Kaye or midlifeflyer, so don't take my advice as gospel. But if you want to know what causes checklist errors, suggest conferring with your favorite CFI on the types of errors they see on an everyday basis - especially amongst their more experienced students - and focus on eliminating those.

Here and in other locations where alternatives to ForeFlight are being discussed, Wing-X keeps showing up in the list of alternatives people recommend trying. For those of you mentioning it, is Wing-X actually viable any more? I ask because I kept a "free CFI" subscription on my devices for a while, but at some point Hilton Software seemed to essentially go dark: no version updates, no e-mail response to support requests, etc. My understanding is "they" (I think it's mostly just Hilton) were focused on a military contract. If you look on the app store right now, you'll see the last Wing-X update for iOS was a full year ago. The Wing-X web page does have a notice about testing on iOS 15.2, but that was three minor revisions and three months ago. Feels to me like they are "trying" to stay in the market and keep their revenue stream alive, but just don't really have the resources to do so. I'd be happy to be wrong about this, as more competition is better. Anyone have a counter story?

This suggestion skeeves me out, due to the way carburetors work. Depending on the carb in question and how efficient you are with your runup, there can absolutely be enough fuel in a carburetor bowl to get you through a quick runup, and takeoff run down the runway, before you discover you switched to a tank that won't feed the carb. Sure, most of our Mooneys are fuel injected, but not all. You don't want to build institutional memory for one airplane that will kill you in another, if at all possible (sometimes it's not). I do like the idea of feeding from both tanks between engine start and takeoff, and we practice this. But we make the switch immediately after engine start, before beginning the taxi to the runup area. Opinions on this will vary, I'm sure. But if you're flying any airplane with any kind of carburetor, it's a worthwhile experiment to turn the fuel selector to off at the end of a flight, and observe just how long it takes for the engine to quit. Depending on the make and model, it can be almost absurdly long. One time I abandoned such an experiment after several minutes, just because I felt bad that the student paying for the airplane was about to pay another tenth of an hour for the Hobbes to roll over.

Depends on how hot things are. It's not unusual for the heat soaking off the cylinders and in the engine compartment to cause poor flow in the fuel lines at idle power and taxi speeds, for much longer than 30 seconds. The IO-360-A1A in our M20F pops and gripes like this on hot (or even warm) days, during the entire taxi from the fuel pump back to the hangar after flying (we have a post-flight fuel up policy in our partnership). It doesn't have an induction leak - no other signs of one, anyway - it's just "the way things are". It's been doing it since we bought it in 2004.

OK, but we've been headed down that rabbit hole for the entire history of language. I find the implied argument unpersuasive, that any particular set of languages changes are going to result in meaningful societal changes, either positive or negative. It's not different this time: today's "woke" is yesterday's "diverse", which was a further yesterday's "politically correct", and still a further yesterday's "genteel". One might as well gripe about Americanisms and Aussie slang that bastardize and demean perfectly good British terminology. Mostly you'll find that people's definition of reasonable language coincides with whatever was in vogue around their 18th birthday. Ironically, my laissez-faire attitude about fighting this stuff is also the result of getting older, and having seen so many of these battles turn out to be irrelevant. The words "moron", "idiot", "retarded", and "challenged" have all been used within my grandparents' lifetime, by kind-hearted activists trying to politely address the reality that some people have less intellectual capacity than others. They've also been used by jerks and bullies to make fun of people and take pleasure from their pain. In the middle we have lots of people like yourself who are just irritated by the change (my wife, for example, insists that "retarded" is a perfectly reasonable word). But no amount of persuasion can convince the kind-hearted against trying yet another campaign for respect, nor can it persuade jerks to stop being jerks, so the cycle continues. It's no more valuable to gripe about this than it is to gripe about the fact the sun rises in the east. I respect that opinions differ on this, lots of fun is going to be made, and some people are genuinely irritated by the waste. But for me, while my agreement to blow with the wind probably loses me some clout with specific individuals I respect (yourself included), it's a net win. Learning new societal terminology is no more complicated than learning new aviation terminology. I've made a few good friends by doing so, more quickly identified a few jerks I don't want to be associated with anyway, and laughed off a few good-natured ribbings about it that are no big deal in the end. And if the FAA - or EEOC or DOL - or the NAACP or ARC (the irony meter is pegged on those particular organizations) - are wasting time on language, people who complain about it are equally wasteful. In the end, it's all a net nothing-burger for society. So no, it's not a "rabbit hole". It's just a human trail - one we've been walking since the dawn of language. Respectfully suggest you think of student vs. learner like METAR vs. SA. The latter change generated a ton of griping 30 years ago - and actually differed slightly in content - but no one cares or talks about it anymore.

I don't like the sound of it, nor the rationale behind it. The argument that language changes are a waste of resources generally resonates with me - though like most, I think there are some good exceptions. It's especially irritating as a, uh... "mature adult" (I'm getting older too), when someone tries the change a reference you've used your whole life. But Don, it seems foolish to punish the good organizations you mentioned on this. Especially given the uncomfortable reality that much of the population they serve genuinely wants or at least doesn't care about changing language (and language is always changing). Directing your anger at EAA, NAFI, AOPA, Gleim etc. for adopting the FAA's prescribed terminology is essentially saying, "Because you focused your involvement with the FAA on important things that mattered a lot, instead of this trivial thing that doesn't actually affect our goals, I'm cutting you out of my will". It's certainly your privilege to do so. But were I running any of those organizations, I'd say, "Sorry to hear that, Don. We've enjoyed your support over the years, and wish you well"; and then privately tell the staff that the loss of your support was a good tradeoff vs. playing nice with the FAA on things that don't actually affect the goals of the organization. As an actual member of some of those organizations, I'd much prefer they focus their time and energy on MOSAIC, unleaded fuel, fending off airport closures, etc. I'll call every one of my students "Carmen Miranda", or anything else the FAA wants, if it keeps the actual focus on actually important things. Because no society or organization in the history of the universe has ever operated without some degree of waste and inefficiency. The best leaders focus on what matters, and don't stand on principle for things that don't. It wasn't worth griping about Class B v.s TCA, nor "Position and Hold" vs. "Line up and wait", nor "Notices to Airmen" vs. "Notices to Air Missions". And it's not worth griping about "learners" either.

For what it's worth, after years of agonizing over this, we stopped changing oil based on hours, and instead consistently change it based on calendar time every 4 months. Yes, I know this doesn't make sense at first glance. But hear me out. The annual/100-hour inspection guidelines for our airplanes require the oil be changed at annual. Of course we had incidents over the years where we wound up having an oil change at annual with an absurdly low number of hours on the oil and filter, which is frustratingly wasteful. Changing oil based on calendar intervals eliminates this problem. Changing oil based on calendar intervals also simplifies the problem of ordering supplies: we order from the same providers at the same times - usually a year's worth of supplies at a time. This strategy does mean engine run hours between changes varies, but honestly not that much. In a "good" year we might put 140 hours on the airplane, with almost half of that occurring during the nice flying months in the middle of the year. In a "bad" year we might only put about 70 hours on the airplane. But in general, the oil winds up being changed somewhere between 25-60 hours of operation, with the longer hour intervals occurring over shorter time periods with slightly more make-up oil inbetween. Altogether, this is an entirely reasonable strategy. I know anecdotes are not data, but we've been running things this way for the past decade, and our engine is currently at 31 years and about 2300 hours since overhaul. Nothing adverse showing up in compression checks, oil analysis, and borescope inspections at every change, our only complaint is that we're beginning to get a number of small seeps at the oil pan gasket and crankcase spine thread, just because everything is three decades old. But we can live with that, and we'll keep running it this way until it talks to us.

The standard "pinch hitter" advice if you're incapacitated in flight would be to teach your girlfriend to pull the mixture to idle cutoff once on the ground. If she happens to be skilled and/or lucky enough to actually be rolling down the centerline, the airplane will coast to a stop with no brakes on almost any reasonable length runway. If she's not rolling down the centerline - which to be frank is the much more likely case - the brakes won't matter, and it's more critical to shut down the engine anyway. Also, don't rent a Cessna for commercial maneuvers. An M20J is a great platform for every commercial maneuver in the ACS. I can understand why renters might want to minimize time in a complex aircraft for commercial training just because of the expense. But if you already own the airplane, it's a no-brainer to just use it.

Having flown and given instruction in several Mooneys with no right side brakes over the past 15-ish years, I'd say the use cases for them are pretty thin. Not having them prevents soloing from the right seat. But soloing from the right seat of a side-by-side aircraft vs. left seat is not particularly interesting or noteworthy. A nervous, green instructor might balk at giving you instruction in your airplane if it has no right side brakes. But you don't want that kind of instructor anyway. It's a little more interesting that a lack of right-side brakes prevents you - if you are a CFI - from putting a completely green first-timer with no concept of toe brake usage in the left seat. Almost no one is using a Mooney as a primary trainer, so that's largely irrelevant. But I have given a couple of "discovery flights" to prospective pilots in my Mooney, where I would have put them in the left seat if my airplane had right side brakes. Instead, they sat in the right seat. I seriously doubt this had any significant impact on their discovery flight experience, though. Those that enjoyed it and wanted to start training moved into the left seat of a Cessna, and those that didn't, didn't. I've heard there are DPEs out there who will refuse to conduct a practical test in an airplane with no right side brakes, so it's possible a lack of right-side brakes could cause you some hassle taking an instrument/commercial/whatever check ride. Dual brakes are not required for practical tests, and most DPEs don't care, but it's their privilege to decline to conduct a test for any reason, and apparently some do. But as with the green CFI, if I was trying to use a DPE for a practical test and found they wanted to decline due to no right seat brakes, I wouldn't want to conduct the check ride with them anyway. In summary, I'd say you can generally trust the market here. The reason there are so many Mooneys with no right side brakes is that it's just not an issue. If you've got two pilot-rated passengers in the front seats, and the right-seater is flying, they can just ask the left seater to apply brakes under the limited set of circumstances where that's actually necessary.

Nice job, sir. Thanks for sharing. The thing I take away from stories about landing gear malfunctions is this: although there is occasionally further damage to the airframe in a gear up (or partially up) landing, there are almost never injuries, and fatalities are essentially unheard of. What gets people into trouble is being so distracted about the situation that they fly the airplane into terrain, run out of gas, etc. Staying calm and making rational choices worked out safely for the OP here, and it almost certainly will for the rest of us too, if we react as he did. Thanks again for sharing your story.

Note that retract times for electric gear Mooneys vary, even across the "vintage" C/E/F/G models. In particular, some of these airplanes have had their landing gear actuator motor retrofitted with the higher ratio gear train from later models (reference SB M20-190B), and therefore extend/retract more slowly. Our '76F takes about 6 seconds to retract/extend.

It's hog's hair. Says so right in the IPC: As I mentioned in another thread a while back... if you want to replace with original, turns out Wal-Mart has a PMA department! https://www.walmart.com/ip/Natural-Aire-Hogs-Hair-Cut-To-Fit-Filter/16225736

True, but I can tell you from experience that's not unique to Northern Colorado. Pretty much every airport anywhere near a major metropolitan area has the same issues. If you think it's bad here, strike up a conversation with someone from the Bay Area some time!

@Marc_B, I'd message you if I had any leads, but immediate availability is essentially zero at KLMO here in 2022, barring having a personal connection with someone. There is an official waiting list that's months long (perhaps not too bad, at least it's not decades long like at some other places). But the only person I know of who had any success getting a hangar recently, just lucked into a slot in a community hangar operated by the local flight school, which the owner occasionally offers to good current/former flight school clients. I flew with that guy this weekend, and his airplane is well protected in the community hangar. Plenty of space, bathroom in the back, pretty decent setup. But we had to move a Bonanza out of the way to get his airplane out, and it was kind of an involved process. I'll keep my eyes and ears out and message you if I hear of anything coming up. The crying shame is that a developer built a half dozen new hangars on the south side of the airport last year, and he's willing and able to build more; but now the city has decided his operation is lucrative enough that they want him to provide about $1M of "infrastructure improvements" to that side of the airport on his own dime, before they'll sign off on any additional units. For now, he has told them to pound sand, so nothing is happening except completion of the most recent unit - which is already spoken for.

Yeah, I've tried flying under the hood using our GTX AHRS driving Foreflight's PFD feature, and had similar experiences - though not quite as bad as you report. One thing I learned from doing so, like many others, is that the GTX AHRS just doesn't seem to be that good. In my airplane, it's good enough to keep the greasy side down; but the AHRS itself - or the bluetooth connection between it and the iPad - lags. And the system indicates a few degrees of pitch or bank when the certified attitude indicator (and the view out the window) show straight and level. At my current level of proficiency, I'm actually a little better with with classic partial panel ASI/TC/ALT/VSI than I am with the iPad/GTX as a backup attitude source. I think if I practiced more, I could adapt my brain to deal with the minor lag and inaccuracy in the iPad/GTX system and perform better than classic partial panel with the remaining mechanical instruments. That would require more training, but honestly that's not a big knock against using the iPad/GTX as backup - its peculiarities are no worse than classic partial panel. At this point I like to think I could use either strategy, but in the event of an actual attitude indicator loss, my current plan is to stick with classic partial panel. That will probably change when we get our second G5 installed here in a month or so. The more interesting lesson for me using the iPad/GTX was a user interface issue, rather than anything "incorrect" about the system. Foreflight's PFD feature employs synthetic vision, and paints terrain, airports, traffic, etc. in its depiction of the "background" behind the attitude indication. This matches what folks with big screen Garmin and Dynon systems enjoy. But if you're used to looking at a small, "classic" attitude indicator without synthetic vision, this turns out to be a little disorienting at first. The reason is that a basic attitude indicator - whether mechanical or electronic - shows a static picture when your attitude is not changing. In other words, nothing on the display "moves" if you're straight and level, or in a constant rate turn. With the addition of synthetic vision, the background moves even when your attitude is not changing. Terrain features slide horizontally in a turn. Even during straight-and-level flight, airports and other ground features slide down on the display as you tool along, due to them passing beneath you. There is nothing incorrect about this functionality, but it's hella disorienting if you're not used to it. With a little practice, I was able to effectively tune it out (perhaps I should say tune it "in"). But again, not something I'd be wanting to deal with for the first time during an actual attitude indicator failure in IMC. We're fortunate to have lots of options for backup attitude in the modern era, whether certified or "advisory". All of them can help if you train with them. If you don't, all of them can burn you worse than if you never had them in the first place.

Yes, and that's the kind of pilot I want to emulate! Really appreciate the fact that not only did he do this, he's posted extensively about it here on Mooneyspace. Incredibly valuable, many thanks to @PT20J. One thing I'd strongly encourage all instrument pilots to do is to go up with a safety pilot under the hood, and fail every gizmo in your airplane you can, in every way you can think of. You're extremely unlikely to damage anything, and extremely likely to learn something. In my case, my position as a hobby CFI at the local flight school affords me a lot of opportunity on this front. Every single airplane at that school has dual G5s and a GFC-500 autopilot (I'm amazed at this, all the airplanes are 70s-era birds, but somehow the owner is able to keep the interiors and panels in nice shape). When flying with instrument students, I power down devices, pull breakers, etc. In theory I'm the old sage, but I'm always honest with the student that it's sometimes a learning experience for me too. The other day I shut down the upper G5 (ADI) in an airplane, and left the lower G5 (HSI) running. After a few seconds, the lower G5 auto-switched to become an ADI as expected, and I let the student struggle with that (if you haven't done this, do it on your next flight - it's much more distracting than you would think). When I finally took pity on the student and turned the upper G5 back on, the lower G5 did *not* auto-switch back to an HSI, but had to be manually switched back. I made a mental note about what this would mean in a failure mode where the primary G5 has a problem that causes it to intermittently lose and re-gain power. For people that fly multiple airplanes, note that the behavior in one airplane won't necessarily follow to another airplane, even if it has the same equipment. As has already been stated here, modern avionics have a number of software config options that control behavior. The one I run across most frequently is whether an IFR-certified, combination GPS/VLOC navigator, is set to auto-switch from GPS to VLOC mode when transitioning from enroute navigation to a ground-based instrument approach. This is software configurable, at least in the Garmin GTN series navigators. The GTN in my airplane auto-switches, but the one in the flight school airplane doesn't. I've seen at least one internet fight where the participants got into a giant argument about this, neither one of them understanding that it's configurable in software. More generally, I just can't emphasize enough how important it is to actually train with whatever "redundancy" you're proud of in your airplane. I can't tell you how many times I've asked pilots - on forums and in real life - if they've actually tried to shoot an instrument approach with the redundant system they're so proud of. e.g. getting attitude information from a backup indicator. Or more interestingly, on an iPad from the AHRS in their GTX 345 or Sentry or BOM or whatever. Disturbingly often, the answer is.... crickets. A significant portion of the pilot population has this surprising attitude that they'll just be able to figure out - literally on-the-fly - how to use their backup system when the chips are down.