Outages, procedures, causes

seipp

Having failures is great. There are lots of positives. Makes it more real, keeps you on your toes, bulds your knowledge of the aircraft systems. But, here's the thing:

In many cases, we don't know what to do about an issue. We do have the manual, which covers some but a lot aren't covered.
In a lot of cases we don't know what caused it. Was it random or something we did? This would be my second question...on the ground to a mechanic.

Yesterday, I had my first systems failure. The piston Duke suddenly veered off course. FD was indicating a turn...why? The plane was following FD. Icing? Vacuum? Blown fuse? I turned off autopilot and put it back on course. I tried turning on antiice and checking fuses. I couldn't see the lights on the Instrument Air. I cheated and looked at the tablet. Oh...Instrument Air failure. This, I learned from observing, meant I had no FD, a failing VSI on the left side, and no autopilot. Now what? I scrambled while trying to fly the plane. Nothing in the manual. Actually found a POH...at least parts of one...nothing there. I ended up flying by hand, descending to the airport, setting up for a long final. Good news is that I was visual. I got it on the ground. So much for a relaxing flight. My thoughts are:

It'd be good if we could catalog the failures. What the effect of the failure is, what to do, what was the cause. We may not know what a RW pilot would do other than aviate, navigate and communicate but it wouldn't hurt to have some kind of reference. That way we could look at information afterward. Maybe I did the right things...maybe not but it would be cool to read it in case it happens next time.

What do folks think?

Gregg

Black Square

Thanks for sharing. I'm glad to hear that you're "enjoying" the failures, haha. The occasional real world flight ends in "so much for my relaxing evening" too, so it's really quite the pleasure to bring this feeling to MSFS for those who want ultimate realism.

Your assessment of the situation is accurate, except that an instrument air failure will not affect the vertical speed indicator. That is a purely a static source instrument. Also, if by "I couldn't see the lights on the Instrument Air" you mean that you simply couldn't see them around the throttles, there is a clickspot at the bottom of the throttle quadrant to hide the throttles, just for this reason.

As for what to do, you nailed the purest answer: aviate, navigate and communicate. It's impossible to cover every possible scenario in the documentation for any real aircraft, so this should be your guiding principle. I also consider this to be one of the chief learning opportunities of my aircraft, since the failures force you to learn systems and create your own solutions. That being said, many of the common failures possible in my aircraft are addressed in the abnormal procedures. You can find the checklists in the manual, or in the native checklist tool in MSFS. In this case, you were looking for...

Dual Instrument Air Failure
Instrument Air - Check Sources
DC Instruments - Check & Reference
Land - As Soon as Practical

You checked the sources with the instrument air indicator, and you landed as soon as practical, so not bad! DC Instruments - Check & Reference means that in order to continue flight in low visibility, you could have relied on the copilot's attitude indicator, which is an electric gyroscope, once the gyros had slowed down on the pilot's attitude indicator, rendering it unreliable.

I hope that answers some of your questions. Let me know if you have any more, because I am always happy to respond!

seipp

@Black-Square said in Outages, procedures, causes:

there is a clickspot at the bottom of the throttle quadrant to hide the throttles, just for this reason.

So cool! Now I know!

Did I say VSI? I meant AI...attitude indicator. Over time its wobbles became worse and worse. Yeah, I was wondering why the Copilot AI was stable and mine wasn't and now I know. Honestly, if the weather had been bad at destination I would have diverted to someplace else. You didn't mention what might cause it...also, is it a preventable event...something you might catch in preflight.

Black Square

Glad I could deliver some new information :) I designed the gyroscopic failures to look exactly like what I've experienced once in my own aircraft. Leading into your next question, no there is virtually nothing you can do to prevent an instrument air or vacuum failure. The rubber impellers that move the air just sometimes fail. You can use the "GYRO PRESS GA" (GA = Gauge) switch above the instrument air gauge to check that both pumps are working before your flight, but if they both fail in flight, you're out of luck.

Most of the failure in my aircraft are "random", while some (mostly engine and starting related, are based on how you treat the aircraft. I've seen criticism of the "random" (Mean Time Between Failure) failures in my aircraft, but for the vast majority of all components in an aircraft, their failure can be best modeled based on MTBF. Even NASA uses these values when assessing the lifespan of General Aviation aircraft components. As someone who has had to replace many parts of his airplane, I can assure you that they appear to just be random occurrences from the operator's point of view.

Avionic

@Black-Square said in Outages, procedures, causes:

there is a clickspot at the bottom of the throttle quadrant to hide the throttles, just for this reason.

Ahh - what a nice little detail. Trying to read oil-temp/press, especially for the right engine (which potentially runs hotter from AC) is a bit of a nightmare on the turbine. Maybe I just overlooked it, but searching around the manual i didn't see this QoL feature mentioned.