G1000 AFCS failure

[James McDiarmid]

Dear all, my AP failed during my flight home yesterday. The aircraft is a 2008 Mooney Acclaim-S. During the first flight of the day it briefly disengaged twice but I pressed the AP button on the GFC700 control panel and it reengaged and remained stable. During the return flight the AP disconnect alarm triggered without me pressing the red button on the yoke and stayed on until after I had pressed the red AP disconnect button, the AFCS red box warning illuminated on the PFD and the AP refused to reset. I switched the AP on and off a few times in flight using the switch on my instrument panel but it didn't help. I just got the red box on the PFD with AFCS.

Fortunately we were in VMC and I hand flew the rest of the journey using the manual pitch trim wheel (old school!)

I had previously seen the red box with PTCH appear intermittently a couple of times in January but it was intermittent and seemed to get better by itself.

I understand that if the OAT probe fails it can cause this problem but looking at the data on the SD card the OAT was functioning normally.

Has anyone else experienced a similar issue, how can I troubleshoot it? Thanks in advance for your advice!

 

 

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[LANCECASPER]

14 hours ago, James McDiarmid said:

 

Dear all, my AP failed during my flight home yesterday. The aircraft is a 2008 Mooney Acclaim-S. During the first flight of the day it briefly disengaged twice but I pressed the AP button on the GFC700 control panel and it reengaged and remained stable. During the return flight the AP disconnect alarm triggered without me pressing the red button on the yoke and stayed on until after I had pressed the red AP disconnect button, the AFCS red box warning illuminated on the PFD and the AP refused to reset. I switched the AP on and off a few times in flight using the switch on my instrument panel but it didn't help. I just got the red box on the PFD with AFCS.

Fortunately we were in VMC and I hand flew the rest of the journey using the manual pitch trim wheel (old school!)

I had previously seen the red box with PTCH appear intermittently a couple of times in January but it was intermittent and seemed to get better by itself.

I understand that if the OAT probe fails it can cause this problem but looking at the data on the SD card the OAT was functioning normally.

Has anyone else experienced a similar issue, how can I troubleshoot it? Thanks in advance for your advice!

 

Take it to a Garmin dealer. They can read the fault.

[PaulM]

https://static.garmin.com/pumac/G1000:Mooney_G1000_GFC700SystemMaintenanceManual.pdf

There is also Garmin Doc 190-00303-04 for generic G1000 information,   I can't find a current copy online. 

[Schllc]

If you are seeing the red X where the horizon is, then it isn't your autopilot.

you should be able to go to the aux page and see which component is malfunctioning.

[James McDiarmid]

Take it to a Garmin dealer. They can read the fault.

Thanks, I did that today - they downloaded the data but couldn’t find anything obviously wrong


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[James McDiarmid]

If you are seeing the red X where the horizon is, then it isn't your autopilot.
you should be able to go to the aux page and see which component is malfunctioning.

No red Xs on the PFD/MFD or aux page


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[James McDiarmid]

https://static.garmin.com/pumac/G1000:Mooney_G1000_GFC700SystemMaintenanceManual.pdf

There is also Garmin Doc 190-00303-04 for generic G1000 information,   I can't find a current copy online. 

Thanks! I also
went through the G1000 bible


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[PaulM]

1 hour ago, James McDiarmid said:

went through the G1000 bible

That is the user manual... has nothing to say about maintenance/hardware diagnostics.  190-00303-04 is the G1000 master line maintenance manual (2008)  If a garmin tech couldn't find anything easy, then it is intermittent, and will be a problem to debug.     Usually the next step is to put the plane on GPU and start to push on the wire bundles and see if anything drops off line. 

If this happens in flight at least take a picture of the LRU status on the 4th main menu. (you said no LRU problems).. 

[James McDiarmid]

That is the user manual... has nothing to say about maintenance/hardware diagnostics.  190-00303-04 is the G1000 master line maintenance manual (2008)  If a garmin tech couldn't find anything easy, then it is intermittent, and will be a problem to debug.     Usually the next step is to put the plane on GPU and start to push on the wire bundles and see if anything drops off line. 
If this happens in flight at least take a picture of the LRU status on the 4th main menu. (you said no LRU problems).. 

Thanks Paul,
I’ll take a look at the maintenance manual.
There were no LRU issues during the AP outage.
I’ll see what Garmin make of the data and talk with the tech…


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