Plane crash with fresh Dual Surefly electronic ignitions installed

[philiplane]

This plane also had an inflight loss of power a day or two before the crash, which occurred about a week after the engine change and Surefly installation:

New Engine equipped with Surefly Electronic Ignition.
Prelim-
https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/ ... 194668/pdf
....The airplane then flew
south to North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, Florida,
where it performed a touch and go landing. During the subsequent takeoff, the airplane
reached an altitude of 75 ft above ground level (agl), made a right turn and was 25 ft agl above
a pond at the last recorded data point.
A witness at the airport stated that he observed an airplane perform a touch and go landing on
runway 27L. The airplane took off, performed a 180° descending right turn and disappeared
behind trees. He then heard the airplane splash into water. He and another person drove to the
pond to render assistance.
The airplane was located in a pond about 600 ft to the right of the departure end of runway
27L. The airplane was submerged in about 15 ft of water. The right wing was impact separated
and located on the north side of the pond.

....Both electronic magnetos remained attached to the engine. Power was applied to both
electronic magnetos. One tower of the left magneto produced spark when the magneto drive
was rotated by hand. The right magneto produced no spark when rotated by hand. Water
drained from both magnetos when the distributor covers were removed. Both magnetos were
set aside to dry overnight. Both magnetos were powered the following morning and rotated
using an electric drill. Neither magneto produced spark from any electrode tower.
According to a mechanic, on or about July 2, 2024, he removed the airplane’s previously
installed Lycoming O-320-D3G engine and installed a Lycoming O-320-D2B. He further
converted the engine to a O-320-D2A by replacing the Bendix magnetos with Slick magnetos.
The owner of the airplane then supplied the mechanic with two Surefly, electronic ignition
modules, which were installed under a supplemental type certificate (STC) which also required
the installation of a backup battery system.

[Shadrach]

23 minutes ago, Aviationist said:

It wasn’t just the surefly that was new, it was the whole engine. 
 

you are pretty quick to jump on the surefly here. 
 

Given that he’s an IA based just south of the accident location and is likely plugged into the local GA mx community, it’s likely that he has additional info that is not included in the preliminary report. For instance, he seems to know that the plane had an in flight power failure days before accident.  
 

Also, I’m pretty sure that  @philiplane is a fan of Surefly products though perhaps not in the dual configuration. 

[GeeBee]

There is so much to unpack here that I say it is way to early to zero in on anything. Let's let this one play out with the investigation.

[philiplane]

8 hours ago, Aviationist said:

Just because you’re near the area doesn’t mean you are privileged with all the inspection and investigation details. 
 

both units were submerged under water for a period of time with power applied. One of them partially worked upon recovery, then not at all later. 
 

having a background in electronics, once submerged, all bets are off on testing and function. 

I also have an extensive background in all things electrical, and avionics. I've had Surefly SIMs on my own Aztec since they were first approved. And yet there is no way I would put dual sims on each engine, until 5-10 years of experience has passed with no unexpected failures.

I am based at Pompano and I know of the accident airplane, the pilot, and the instructor who perished in this unfortunate crash. We'll see what the final report says next year, but I would expect it will come down to some sort of installation error.

[EricJ]

29 minutes ago, philiplane said:

I also have an extensive background in all things electrical, and avionics. I've had Surefly SIMs on my own Aztec since they were first approved. And yet there is no way I would put dual sims on each engine, until 5-10 years of experience has passed with no unexpected failures.

I'm still of the opinion that if everybody had been operating with all-electronic ignitions forever and somebody just invented magnetos, which are self-contained and don't need any external source of power, and have only simple mechanical and passive electrical components, people would be falling over themselves to install them as a redundancy and safety measure.   

 

[GeeBee]

I think SureFly is dead in the water anyway. Champion just came out with their own electronic design which includes a PMA (permanent magnet alternator) so no need for bus power. It is good for 2000 hours. All the advantages of SureFly and others without the need for backup batteries.

https://www.avweb.com/air-shows-events/champion-aerospace-announces-innovative-new-magneto/

[toto]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

I think SureFly is dead in the water anyway. Champion just came out with their own electronic design which includes a PMA (permanent magnet alternator) so no need for bus power. It is good for 2000 hours. All the advantages of SureFly and others without the need for backup batteries.

https://www.avweb.com/air-shows-events/champion-aerospace-announces-innovative-new-magneto/

I was excited about this when I saw the announcement … having a self-contained unit seems like it must cut the install cost substantially - no extra batteries, annunciators or ignition switches. 

They’re hoping for two years to market .. and then it will be years after that before we know how reliable they are, and what kind of performance to expect. But in the meantime, as you said, they’ve killed the electronic ignition business by introducing FUD. 

[philiplane]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

I think SureFly is dead in the water anyway. Champion just came out with their own electronic design which includes a PMA (permanent magnet alternator) so no need for bus power. It is good for 2000 hours. All the advantages of SureFly and others without the need for backup batteries.

https://www.avweb.com/air-shows-events/champion-aerospace-announces-innovative-new-magneto/

Given Champion's pricing, I would expect they'll price this at $3k per unit. 

[toto]

51 minutes ago, philiplane said:

Given Champion's pricing, I would expect they'll price this at $3k per unit. 

One IRAN for my D3000 cost $3k, so if they want to make a slide in dual mag replacement, it would save me 75% over the TBO

 

[Andy95W]

2 hours ago, philiplane said:

Given Champion's pricing, I would expect they'll price this at $3k per unit. 

That means the SureFly is definitely not DOA.  (I still would never install 2 of them, though.)

Edited July 28 by Andy95W

[N201MKTurbo]

So the theory with any redundant system is that they are unlikely to both fail at the same time. That has kept us in the air for the last 100 years with magnetos. 
 

So assuming that it was a failure of the ignition system, what do the two SIMs have in common? They both need external electrical power. What could cause that? I thought they needed independent power sources? One connected to the ships battery and the other to its own battery. What could cause them both to fail? Perhaps a complete loss of grounding between the engine and the airframe? That is unlikely because of all the other grounding sources like control cables and such. Not to mention if the ground was that bad, it would be difficult to start the engine.

[GeeBee]

I could not understand why others have not used the PMA route until now. It is pretty much the way FADECs are powered on turbines utilizing bus power only in emergency or maintenance. Every time I mention it to the electronic manufacturers such as SureFly and others they look at me like my head is sewn on the carpet. My guess is you are going to see a SureFly 2.0 in the future.

[EricJ]

3 hours ago, GeeBee said:

I could not understand why others have not used the PMA route until now. It is pretty much the way FADECs are powered on turbines utilizing bus power only in emergency or maintenance. Every time I mention it to the electronic manufacturers such as SureFly and others they look at me like my head is sewn on the carpet.

I think previously it's been difficult to package everything needed and get the electrical power management sorted out, i.e., generate enough power to drive the controller and the ignition, and not generate so much heat to create your own problems.   These days it's easier to do all those things, so it may just be that the electronic technology has finally made it practical.

3 hours ago, GeeBee said:

My guess is you are going to see a SureFly 2.0 in the future.

One would hope.   The current system imho is pretty much the equivalent of a very basic 1970s or early 1980s automotive electronic ignition.   There is a ton of room for improvement.    Some of the experimental guys have pretty sophisticated electronic engine management working, and Lycoming has their FADEC recip engines, so the potential is there.   I don't know that the market economics are sufficient to really see it all happen, though.

[philiplane]

7 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

So the theory with any redundant system is that they are unlikely to both fail at the same time. That has kept us in the air for the last 100 years with magnetos. 
 

So assuming that it was a failure of the ignition system, what do the two SIMs have in common? They both need external electrical power. What could cause that? I thought they needed independent power sources? One connected to the ships battery and the other to its own battery. What could cause them both to fail? Perhaps a complete loss of grounding between the engine and the airframe? That is unlikely because of all the other grounding sources like control cables and such. Not to mention if the ground was that bad, it would be difficult to start the engine.

On a new installation, failure modes are simple. Not enough torque on the nuts, or a crimped connection failure, for example. There's also the question of whether the required standby battery was added, and if it was properly installed to be a true backup. 

[philiplane]

7 hours ago, toto said:

One IRAN for my D3000 cost $3k, so if they want to make a slide in dual mag replacement, it would save me 75% over the TBO

 

If Champion made a dual mag electronic replacement, you can be assured it will cost more than $6k. They get $1900 for a new conventional single magneto now, after the latest round of price increases.

[toto]

3 hours ago, philiplane said:

If Champion made a dual mag electronic replacement, you can be assured it will cost more than $6k. They get $1900 for a new conventional single magneto now, after the latest round of price increases.

That was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Electroair has a D3000 replacement that’s about $5k plus installation today, and I wouldn’t expect a dual mag solution from Champion to be less than that (especially if installation cost is significantly reduced).

[A64Pilot]

On 7/28/2024 at 12:16 PM, GeeBee said:

I could not understand why others have not used the PMA route until now. It is pretty much the way FADECs are powered on turbines utilizing bus power only in emergency or maintenance. Every time I mention it to the electronic manufacturers such as SureFly and others they look at me like my head is sewn on the carpet. My guess is you are going to see a SureFly 2.0 in the future.

I’ve wondered that myself as a PMG anyway like used on the GE T-700 series is small, light, simple and I never heard of one fail. It’s just too easy, if it were me they would replace the Mag, but the rest of the components would be individually mounted.

The GE PMG had three phases, one powered the engine ECU, the second powered the Ng gauge and the third powered the engine spark igniters, which require huge current, so surely they could power spark plugs at starting RPM?

I’m not sure why they called it a generator as it had three phases I believe it made AC power, but the two big 70 KVA AC generators were also called generators eventhough they made AC power and those weren’t permeant magnet.

So what makes a thing that produces AC power a generator and not an alternator?

Sure why not have bus power as a backup, but with dual independent PMA’s you have the same level of redundancy that dual mags do, or am I missing something?

Mag’s of course are powered by PMA’s just may not be called that. 

Solid state electronic ignition has orders of magnitudes more reliability than point ignition as demonstrated by millions of automobiles running around with then for the last 50 years, so wouldn’t it seem logical that dual independent ones would be even more reliable?

[GeeBee]

26 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Sure why not have bus power as a backup, but with dual independent PMA’s you have the same level of redundancy that dual mags do, or am I missing something?

Not missing a thing.

[N201MKTurbo]

My old Gold Wing motor cycle had a permanent  magnet alternator. It had a voltage regulator that put enough load on the bus to drag the output down to the specified buss voltage. That thing was very inefficient. The alternator would constantly produce its maximum output and the excess power had to be dissipated.  This was constantly burning up the wires and connections. There was a popular modification to add a Denso alternator driven by the cam belt pulley.
 

So if we were to right size a PMA for starting, it would produce way more power at full speed than needed. This power would need to be dissipated. I have thought of a hybrid alternator with a permanent magnet field with an electro magnet that would oppose the PM field. This way it would be able to generate enough power to start, yet use less power to reduce its output than just turning it into heat. 

[NickG]

Is it possible that this was a case of infant mortality on the new engine and had nothing to do with the electronic mags?

[Ragsf15e]

On 7/28/2024 at 9:16 AM, N201MKTurbo said:

So the theory with any redundant system is that they are unlikely to both fail at the same time. That has kept us in the air for the last 100 years with magnetos. 
 

So assuming that it was a failure of the ignition system, what do the two SIMs have in common? They both need external electrical power. What could cause that? I thought they needed independent power sources? One connected to the ships battery and the other to its own battery. What could cause them both to fail? Perhaps a complete loss of grounding between the engine and the airframe? That is unlikely because of all the other grounding sources like control cables and such. Not to mention if the ground was that bad, it would be difficult to start the engine.

Im guessing the normal, no fuel. Even with an installation error, it would be pretty hard to fail both at once unless you hooked them up to the same power source with the same wire (which is obviously not legal)…

[A64Pilot]

On 7/29/2024 at 3:21 PM, N201MKTurbo said:

My old Gold Wing motor cycle had a permanent  magnet alternator. It had a voltage regulator that put enough load on the bus to drag the output down to the specified buss voltage. That thing was very inefficient. The alternator would constantly produce its maximum output and the excess power had to be dissipated.  This was constantly burning up the wires and connections. There was a popular modification to add a Denso alternator driven by the cam belt pulley.
 

ALL old motorcycles / outboard motors etc operated that way. It is inefficient, but who cares because it’s not that much power you need to waste. They had rectifiers not voltage regulators, the rectifier did the same job it does in an alternator, that is converts AC to pulsating DC, but it was also the thing that wasted the excess power into heat. Requirement of more power than you could get from a lighting coil is what tripped the change, boats with trolling motors, RADAR’s, bottom machine etc the same, bike with radios, heated clothing etc.

I’m not sure how GE and the other turbine engines deal with using a PMA or PMG in GE’s case but they do and it has a very good reliability, in 16 yrs or so being in units with 56 or so engine I never heard of a PMG failure. 

[N201MKTurbo]

16 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

ALL old motorcycles / outboard motors etc operated that way. It is inefficient, but who cares because it’s not that much power you need to waste. They had rectifiers not voltage regulators, the rectifier did the same job it does in an alternator, that is converts AC to pulsating DC, but it was also the thing that wasted the excess power into heat. Requirement of more power than you could get from a lighting coil is what tripped the change, boats with trolling motors, RADAR’s, bottom machine etc the same, bike with radios, heated clothing etc.

I’m not sure how GE and the other turbine engines deal with using a PMA or PMG in GE’s case but they do and it has a very good reliability, in 16 yrs or so being in units with 56 or so engine I never heard of a PMG failure. 

I just screwed that thing on top of the air intake of a Mariner 75 on my pontoon about 10 minutes ago.