rklems

When he cancelled the surgery at the last minute due to the halo concern, he felt so bad that I had driven up from Tucson, had hotel room, etc. They paid for the hotel, gave me gift cards for restaurants and tickets to a show to make up for having made the trip for naught. They really had a great practice. The 3 founders are all long since retired and/or deceased and it's probably different now, but they had me as a patient for life from the way they treated me. I still see an OD down here in Tucson twice a year for my checkups at one of their locations here.

Close, right practice! Dr. Dulaney was the one who suggested I wait.

I went through all the tests and pre-op stuff with a large Arizona based eye surgery center in 2001 to have LASIK. I was in the final meeting with the surgeon (one of the named partners) just a few minutes prior to having the procedure and we were chatting, asked me more about myself, etc. Told him I was a flight instructor, etc. He paused, shuffled some paperwork around, reviewed some things and flat out said, I don't think you should do this right now. He said that my pupils dilate larger than the area they can treat with the current technology, and he was concerned that I'd be subject to halos. He told me that they were always involved in clinical trials of new lasers and equipment and that the technology was advancing rapidly, and I should check back in a year or two. I was pretty bummed, but also relieved/impressed that they were more concerned with the outcome rather than the income. Due to life, it was about 6 years before I revisited it. I went back to the same practice, unfortunately that surgeon had since retired, but I moved forward with another one of their surgeons. The technology had advanced and they could treat the larger area needed to avoid the halos. They had a protocol they were using to reduce the chance of dry eye, where I had to be on Restasis (dry eye med) for (IIRC) 60 days prior to the procedure. I had the procedure, including the laser flap. Immediately was 20/10 in the left eye, right eye was pretty good, but not as good (20/40 I think?). After a few months of follow up, they decided to do a second procedure on my right eye (I had a pretty significant astigmatism in my right eye, and they had warned me up front there was about a 50/50 chance I'd need a second procedure, which was included in the initial cost). The first procedure was very painless (the laser flap cutting was pretty wild though, the machine that does it felt like an elephant sitting down on your eyeball, not painful, just an incredible amount of pressure), the second procedure where they had to lift the flap, I had a few weeks of sandy/gritty type discomfort. After the second procedure I was 20/10 in the right eye as well. It's now 18 years later, and I'm still extremely happy. I just turned 50 this year, and do need readers at times, due to the natural loss of flexibility of the lens with age,, but I'm still testing at 20/10 on the eye charts. I consider it the best money I've ever spent, 18 years without glasses or contacts. I don't have any issues with halos, or dry eye. I had no issue passing my medical once the healing was complete and the eyesight was stable. At the time I had the procedure, I believe I paid around $5-7k for it, and there were lots of places advertising $500 LASIK, but I really believe that you get what you pay for.

This happens from time to time when a controller fat fingers the tail number when someone gets flight following (and manufacturers often get the N numbers in similar blocks, so a simple typo can often be a similar model). If you look at the track log for the flight, what does it say for the reporting facility? It'll say something like FAA Facility when it's coming from the FAA feed vs FlightAware ADS-B when it's coming from the feeder network. If it shows from FlightAware ADS-B then that's typically an installer mistake (either mis-entering the N number, or forgetting to reset the value when a piece of used equipment is sold and installed elsewhere)

PM me your email and I’ll send you a copy

It's the ADS-B FIS-B weather overlay. There can be incomplete data that then gets filled in when you are in better reception. If you were to toggle that off momentarily, you should see it disappear.

System is showing attitude & heading miscompare errors, and in the second picture there is a significant attitude difference between the G3X display and the G5 display (there might be in the #1 & #5 pictures too, but they don't show the G5 to compare to). In that situation, which one appeared to be correct? There are essentially 3 AHRS in the system, the GSU25 with the G3X, the internal one in the G5 and the one in the GMC507 that is used for cross checking. It looks like you might have had a data card in the G3X, do you have the data recording enabled?

From a comparison of the parts list in table 11-5 of the S-20/S-200 service support manual, the -18 and -118 are essentially identical parts lists, except the -118 has the orifice instead of a vent plug(#44a vs #44), as well as 3 additional gaskets (#14, 34 & 49 in the parts drawing). So it's possible someone "converted" that to a pressurized mag without updating the data plate. At the end of the day, glad you got it working again, but technically, the sensor is not the one they are calling for to be used with that magneto (though appears to be working fine when it's plugged in), and you may want to be sure the magneto was properly converted between the -18 and -118 (if it was really converted, they should have changed the data plate)... in the pictures it doesn't look to me like the gaskets are present (they are a rubberish+metallic and you can usually see the edges of the metal fibers sticking out), but again, hard to tell. They may have just put the fittings on the mag to feed the upper deck pressure, I'd also be curious if the proper calibrated leak orifice is installed instead of the vented plug where the sensor is.

I'd definitely take a look at the data tag on the mag. The 10-79020-18 is an S6LN-25, which is an S-20 magneto, not an S-1200 mag (which is what the 420807 sensor is for). So that would definitely be the wrong sensor if that's the mag you have. If you have a pressurized S-20 series magneto, the 420806 is the proper PN per the 930 installation manual "For the pressurized Bendix -20, 200, series & S6LSC-25P and non-pressurized Slick 600 use JPI P/N 420806." There isn't enough in the picture to positively identify the mag for me, but it being unpainted, feels like an older style mag.

That picture sure looks like a pressurized mag to me? Isn't that a hose going in to the mag right there? So the 420807 sensor mounts underneath the calibrated leak orifice plug on the magneto. Most of the pictures that you'll see online linked to the 420807 are the wrong picture... It's more like a washer with a lead. I'll attach a picture below. It would likely be a pain to pull the orifice and change the sensor with the mag in place, though depending on the clocking of the mag, it might be possible.

If I was a betting man, I'd probably put money on the GSA 81 Roll Servo. We maintain the CAP AZ Wing aircraft (almost all G1000 + GFC700 AP), and I've yet to see a GIA failure for the autopilot, but in the past year have had to replace 4 GSA 81 servos (3 roll and one pitch IIRC, but they are identical servos... just the strapping is different). Typical failure mode is they stop talking on the RS-485 bus back to the GIA (had one that was still talking, but wouldn't actually actuate). Pretty easy to test in the config mode on the G1000, can then ring out wiring, make up a pass through cable to patch the wiring to another servo, or fairly easily swap the servo with another one from the ship to confirm wiring is functional but servo isn't talking. The GFC700 is nice for servo replacements, like the 200 series King servos, where you replace the servo independent of the servo mount, makes it pretty painless. The only other GFC 700 failures I've seen in the last year was a short in one of the two trim signal wires (there is a trim arm, and then a up or down command), the arm wire had chaffed and was continuously shorted to ground causing an AFCS failure in the PFT, and there was one broken wire in the connector for a pitch servo. These aren't what I'd call premature failures on the servos though, they all had several thousand hours of being in the aircraft, and their operations are pretty AP usage heavy.

A single bottle refill system will drop down pretty quickly over a few fills to not be putting that much in to the bottle (unless you are using some sort of pressure boosting system, but those are pretty pricey). You are right that you don't want to just dump the O2 from one to the other, you have to modulate the flow to a trickle to keep the bottle from heating up too much. The supply bottle valves are often not that great for small adjustments, they can be hard to turn, can stick, etc (they live a hard rental life). That's where the trans filler setups work. They are designed to make it easy to cascade multiple bottles together, and provide the easy adjustment to slowly trickle in, and the bleed valve is very useful to bleed the pressure off for disconnect. The separate gauge on the transfill setup is also useful for checking bottle pressures, yes in a single bottle systems, the end point pressures should be equal, but the gauge might not be accurate, you might want to know before connecting what the bottle pressure is (it'll change significantly based on the temperature of the bottle). Also, don't forget the pressures involved here, you don't want to close off both valves and still have 2000 psi in the hose that you are slowly backing off the threads until you get to a point that it starts to bleed off the pressure (or the few threads left can't hold back the pressure and rip off and the hose whips in to your face, and the hose and/or bottle is permanently damaged) If you do get a transfill setup, remember that even with the bleed valve, that does not remove the pressure in the lines behind the regulator, only in the interface between the regulator and the bottle being filled, so if you ever swap the bottle(s) out, gotta make sure to open the regulator and bleed those lines too.

Loose oil filter, cracked oil cooler, and both turbo check valves and the hoses are also potential sources of high volume oil leaks in that area.

Push rod tubes are drain back from the oil pushed up in to the top of the head from the hydraulic lifters, there is no real pressure there to have a significant volume leak out, especially in such a short flight. A blocked scavenge port or failed scavenge check valve would cause oil to flood the turbo bearing and be pumped out at fairly high velocity (I’ve seen a Rocket that did this twice and pumped 6qts in about 15m both times… there is actually a service bulletin on coking in the scavenge port on that conversion). But you would get a lot of smoke and of course the exhaust is on the right side, not left. The high pressure oil outlet that feeds the turbo is on the left side so perhaps check that for tightness, as well as the other end of that hose at the inlet check valve. I imagine a good wash down and engine run would probably show where the oil is shooting out pretty quickly I would of course be concerned with the low oil pressure condition, as well as if you went below the minimum oil level and potentially starved things for oil.

A diplexer attached to your nav antenna should work great like @N201MKTurbo mentioned. If you don’t already have one, I have a whole bunch of used ones (most modern radios take the combined nav signal and do the signal splitting internally, so I remove a lot of them and just use full signal splitters)

I would check with some of the more well known fuel shops like Aircraft Accessories of OK, QAA, and Mike's Aircraft Fuel Metering Service. Any of them should be able to OH your pump, some may even have an exchange unit available.

You can split an RS-232 signal easily with just a splice. You can have one transmitter feeding several receivers, but you cannot have several transmitters feeding one receiver. So the issue you would run in to is that the serial indicator for a SL30 requires a transmit and a receive, so while the SL30 could transmit data to multiple receivers, the OBS selection being transmitted back to the SL30 can only come from one device.

What is your bus voltage normally (without the landing light)? What is the rated output of your alternator and what kind of load are you running typically? I don't recommend randomly shotgunning parts, and wouldn't start OH'ing or replacing parts before someone fully troubleshoots the system and determines where the problem lies.

The GNX375 is a great unit, you won't be disappointed. I've installed a number of them and I love the unit. I put one in my 172 along with the 255 and 215 (the older version of the 215/205). I hadn't suggested it since you were looking for a COM or COM/NAV, but it really is a great all-in-one kinda unit.

Autopilot installations can not be field approved per the FAA job aid: https://drs.faa.gov/browse/excelExternalWindow/5394780C328E120C862581600045B7E7.0001 See the definitions on page 4 and the autopilot reference D.13h on page 13, which notes it as STC. The STC definition does have the caveat of "With the complexity of broad applications concerning major alterations, inspectors occasionally encounter a situation in which the guidance material identifies “STC”, but the applicant feels the change doesn't warrant approval as a major change to the product's type design. See the discussion below for the reclassification process." There is D.13h(1) which makes a simple single axis AP ENG (So possibly just DER approval), but an Aerocruze is not a single axis AP. Getting a specific project reclassified out of STC would require FSDO supporting that, then forwarding it on to the ACO and then ACO approving the reclassification of the process and forwarding it back to the FSDO for evaluation.

That is definitely the vacuum driven speedbrake cable

Re: Option 1 .... While I think the SL30 is a fine unit, Garmin is ending all support for it this year (https://atlaske-content.garmin.com/filestorage//email/outbound/attachments/25013A_Time1743445910149.pdf), so I'd hate to see you pick one up and have the display or something crap out on it a year from now and have wasted all that money.

I presume you mean a GNC215 in to a GTR205 tray, as a GNC255 will _definitely_ not fit without a bandsaw. They use the same tray and d-sub connectors, the GNC tray has the additional nav antenna connector. They also use the same wiring for the com and intercom pins, so other than having to add the pins for nav functions and the connector for the nav antenna, they are interchangeable in the tray.

What kind of flying do you do? Your current panel only has the single nav source, if you do much IFR, I'd personally like to have some sort of panel based back up navigation source. If you had the vertical space a GNC355 might be a good option, I know it's not in your list, but I'd posit that a screen failure or power failure to the GNS is more likely than both a GPS outage and a total failure of the GNS unit and the 355 offers a lot more utility than just the VHF nav the 215 does in the case of a GNS failure. If budget doesn't allow that, the 215 is a fine choice, and if you don't do any IFR, just having the backup COM should be plenty good enough.

From other posts, looks like you have a G3X w/EIS. In a factory setup, the sense lines to the annunciator come off terminals that are piggybacked on the stud at the fuel gauge where the fuel sender comes in. The senders in a factory setup are resistive, I don't know for sure it's the same, but going to assume its the same as on a K, where low resistance to high resistance goes low fuel to high fuel. Is your EIS installation new or have you had it a while? There are a lot of guesses/assumptions here, but if you still have the factory senders (as opposed to CiES frequency based senders, in which case I'd say if you are getting a low fuel indication, then the wire for the annunciator was left in and is getting shorted to ground somewhere, as I don't think there is another means to drive that sense line with a CiES sender), there can be a couple different reasons why this might be behaving differently now. Resistive probes are basically a wound wire resistor with a finger that rides up and down that wound wire, varying the resistance. Over time this fine wound wire can wear out, break, develop corrosion, etc. This can cause poor indications, jumpiness, etc. You aren't mentioning any strangeness in the display of quantity, but the G3X uses some smoothing on the data, so that the quantities don't jump around significantly as you bank, encounter turbulence, etc. The annunciator circuit also provides some analog smoothing, so it needs to see a certain low resistance value for a number of seconds before the circuit will actually start to trigger the low fuel annunciation. In theory, over a period of time, both the indication and the annunciation should be indicating a lower fuel quantity if there was a significant departure in the resistance level of the sender. If this is an older G3X install, and thereby used a GEA24 vs GEA24B EIS interface, then there are a couple other reasons this could be occurring. There is an AD for resistive interfaces to the GEA24 EIS interface, and the AD requires reconfiguring the resistive senders through some parallel resistors and resetting the configuration from 0-620 ohm resistive to 0-5V. This AD was effective March 2022, so likely would have been completed previously, but ADs have been missed before, so it's possible this was recently done (and would have likely impacted the low fuel indications, depending on how exactly this was interfaced between the senders, the G3X and the annunciator)? It seems like you recently had an annual (saw the thread about the busted gear switch), so perhaps this AD just got done, or something got touched when the gear switch was replaced, or a sender is starting to vary in resistance a bit, or the annunciator circuit just drifted over time and needs to be recalibrated.