G1000 problems

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Prana14

Filing Flight Plan
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kevin phillips
My autopilot continually refuses to work at all. I use the autopilot to trim my da40. The trim is very sensitive. I just did a 50min flight I finally got it properly trimmed 5 min before landing. My autopilot goes out once or twice a year. It gives me a lot of hand flying experience. The Garmin autopilot on my boat quit requiring me to do 20 hrs on the wheel. Flying home the next week the Garmin autopilot crapped out. I feel snake bit by Garmin.
 
Cool story bro. Fix your plane and boat.
 
Prana14 said:
My autopilot continually refuses to work at all. I use the autopilot to trim my da40. The trim is very sensitive. I just did a 50min flight I finally got it properly trimmed 5 min before landing. My autopilot goes out once or twice a year. It gives me a lot of hand flying experience. The Garmin autopilot on my boat quit requiring me to do 20 hrs on the wheel. Flying home the next week the Garmin autopilot crapped out. I feel snake bit by Garmin.
Click to expand...
Did you have a question about any of it or was this just an informative post?
 
TiltOn22 said:
Did you have a question about any of it or was this just an informative post?
Click to expand...

I think it’s the incipient phase of a rant.

I have nothing to add.

Avidyne.


(^ sounds like a haiku or somethin’, don’t it?)
 
The trim is very sensitive sounds more like a diamond issue than a Garmin issue. Cirrus is like that too. I do two things to make it easier. One is continually trim to reduce stick force, the other is to dial in the pitch I want before final trimming using the control stick rather than trying to find my desired pitch using the trim button. Short quick stabs on the trim button works well for fine adjustments
 
What is the failure mode of your AP? What indications do you get on your PFD? Of course there are many reasons an AP can fail. One reason is poor contact due to oxidation on your G1000 LRU's (line replaceable units). There are posts on DAN (Diamond Aviators.NET, which hopefully you visit regularly) about cleaning contacts in the LRU rack under your back cargo deck. This holds your GTX, your GIA63/64's, etc. I found out in a tour of the Diamond factory last month that Diamond actually manufactures this, it is not a standard Garmin product. When I have experienced a few intermittent AP failures, I have successfully followed the guidance in that thread to carefully remove LRU's and clean the contacts on both the LRU and the chassis and restored reliable operation. You should be VERY careful doing this as a bent or damaged pin on any of the hundreds of contacts could be expensive to fix.

https://www.diamondaviators.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4301&hilit=autopilot

Have you tried resetting the AP breaker and does it come back up? Were you experiencing significant turbulence at the time? Sometimes in heavy turbulence, the AP just gives up and throws an error. Especially if you keep it in Altitude Hold mode. Happened to me a few times over West Texas and NM. I could cycle the breaker in flight and restore proper operation.
 
midlifeflyer said:
We don’t even know if the AP is a GFC 700 or a KAP 140.
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My first thought as well. Among the Diamonds I’ve operated and maintained the only one that gave me autopilot trouble was one with a KAP 140, which had annoying pitch problems. The Garmin units worked great.
 
Would this be the place to rant about the **** quality of the rotatry encoder knobs (FMS) on the G1000? We had a screen replaced recently, and like clockwork the @#$@#$# knob started failing right after their warranty expired...
 
A lot of the elevator trim issues on DA40s are due to binding pitch trim damper rods (under the horizontal stabilizer). Clean yours and measure the tension as per the Maintenance Manual. It may require adjustment.
 
If your airplane is really hard to trim without ap the problem isn't garmin or ap
 
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