G1000 Big Red X over Fuel Gauge

Craig R

Craig R

Filing Flight Plan
Joined
Mar 15, 2017
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23
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Bradenton Sarasota
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Display name:
Craig R
The Big Red X has now shown up twice, for a moment or two, for the right tank gauge. I am confident there is plenty of fuel in the plane. Never depart with less than about fifty gallons, unless I am off to a self serve station 30 minutes away. Always manually gauge both tanks. Last flight I manually gauged the tank once on the ramp and found the fuel amount that I expected.

Any experience with something similar?
 
I flew in a 182T last week that had the same issue. The pilot said it keeps doing that randomly for him as well in that plane
 
They still use rheostats in some of the G1000 systems. Just like the old airplanes. Some are carbon-track types instead of the wirewound affairs, but they're all rather cheap things that can suffer very brief blips in resistance as they jump around in sloshing fuel. The old analog gauges were slow to react so you didn't usually notice anything, but the electronics are really sensitive and quick to detect a brief jump in resistance to infinity and back.

Potentiometers (a form of rheostat) are a pain. Older folks here will remember old radios and TVs that had potentiometers to control volume and tone and picture and so on. They would get worn and dirty and make staticky sounds in the speakers when you moved them, or make the picture hard to settle down. Some modern cars use them for throttle control, and they use two of them operated by the pedal so that the computer can detect when one is fibbing about throttle position and it will go into limp mode. My Hyundai did that; I bought a new pedal assembly. It fixed the problem. For nearly $300. I opened the old one and found that I should just have taken the cover off it, wiped off the carbon dust worn off the carbon tracks, and closed it up and reinstalled it. Would have worked just fine.

Flight simulators use potentiometers for flight control inputs. They suffer the usual wear/dust problems, and sometimes the sim will roll or pitch out of control.

Why they can't use a variable inductor or Hall-effect or some other non-contact-wearing affair is beyond me. I know some cars use the Hall-effect sensor for throttle. But potentiometers in an $80K simulator?
 
I don't have much experience in G1000 systems, but doesn't the big red 'X' mean that the system is not communicating with the input, rather than a status of the input? If that's the case, it's probably a bad connection to the fuel sensor in the right tank...i.e. loose wire, bad ground, etc., rather than the condition of the variable resistor guage.
 
All the time I get it in the G1000 I use. I disregard it, I always go on known fuel and time.
 
Had it happen momentarily sometimes in the G1000 172s/Seminoles.
 
unsafervguy said:
so you disregard FAR91.205(b)(9)?
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Uhhhh, Enough of you guys postings your wealth of knowledge by being able to put an FAR number. Yes I DISREGARD IT, Fuel gauges are for the most part useless. So you go live your happy little life that you are able to post a number on the internet. Just as you and EVRY other pilot out there disregards one FAR or another, so go back to FAR 91 blah blah blah and go rub one out.
 
TommyG said:
Uhhhh, Enough of you guys postings your wealth of knowledge by being able to put an FAR number. Yes I DISREGARD IT, Fuel gauges are for the most part useless. So you go live your happy little life that you are able to post a number on the internet. Just as you and EVRY other pilot out there disregards one FAR or another, so go back to FAR 91 blah blah blah and go rub one out.
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Here here.
 
The fuel gauge sensor wire has discontinuity
My left tank gave me the big x last week, searched into the wiring at the wing to fuselage junction all ok, then checked the two wires from the fuel sensor sensor and sure enough the ground wire had vibrated itself out of the weld
 
TommyG said:
Uhhhh, Enough of you guys postings your wealth of knowledge by being able to put an FAR number. Yes I DISREGARD IT, Fuel gauges are for the most part useless. So you go live your happy little life that you are able to post a number on the internet. Just as you and EVRY other pilot out there disregards one FAR or another, so go back to FAR 91 blah blah blah and go rub one out.
Click to expand...
I just love sharing the sky (and the road) with people that think the rules dont apply to them. some of us rely on flying to feed our family. there is no way in hell im going to do something so stupid as fly an aircraft that I KNOW is unairworthy in the eyes of the FAA and risk not getting a paycheck just because i think that rule is stupid. why can I quote fars? because I am a professional and make it my business to know the rules that I need to follow. somebody asks a serious question trying to learn more about the systems in their aircraft and you pipe in telling them to ignore it in violation of the FARS. now go back to watching hee haw and making out with your sister.
 
The fuel gauges on the Lucky Strike are utterly useless. One of these days I'll have to have the senders reamed.
 
TommyG said:
Uhhhh, Enough of you guys postings your wealth of knowledge by being able to put an FAR number. Yes I DISREGARD IT, Fuel gauges are for the most part useless. So you go live your happy little life that you are able to post a number on the internet. Just as you and EVRY other pilot out there disregards one FAR or another, so go back to FAR 91 blah blah blah and go rub one out.
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unsafervguy said:
I just love sharing the sky (and the road) with people that think the rules dont apply to them. some of us rely on flying to feed our family. there is no way in hell im going to do something so stupid as fly an aircraft that I KNOW is unairworthy in the eyes of the FAA and risk not getting a paycheck just because i think that rule is stupid. why can I quote fars? because I am a professional and make it my business to know the rules that I need to follow. somebody asks a serious question trying to learn more about the systems in their aircraft and you pipe in telling them to ignore it in violation of the FARS. now go back to watching hee haw and making out with your sister.
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OPk0TuW.jpg
 
unsafervguy said:
I just love sharing the sky (and the road) with people that think the rules dont apply to them. some of us rely on flying to feed our family. there is no way in hell im going to do something so stupid as fly an aircraft that I KNOW is unairworthy in the eyes of the FAA and risk not getting a paycheck just because i think that rule is stupid. why can I quote fars? because I am a professional and make it my business to know the rules that I need to follow. somebody asks a serious question trying to learn more about the systems in their aircraft and you pipe in telling them to ignore it in violation of the FARS. now go back to watching hee haw and making out with your sister.
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And good for you. But if you feel that an intermittent fuel gauge is a real safety hazard to flight, and endangers other pilots, you apparently don't know what really goes on out there. My whole point was you guys that come and here and mention FAR 91 whatever, as if the rest us are too stupid to know the regulations. If you want to have a discussion about the subject matter fine, but guys like you are seriously annoying. And if you really want to make inbred jokes, bro you are in SW Florida!!!
 
TommyG said:
And good for you. But if you feel that an intermittent fuel gauge is a real safety hazard to flight, and endangers other pilots, you apparently don't know what really goes on out there. My whole point was you guys that come and here and mention FAR 91 whatever, as if the rest us are too stupid to know the regulations. If you want to have a discussion about the subject matter fine, but guys like you are seriously annoying. And if you really want to make inbred jokes, bro you are in SW Florida!!!
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i guess i dont know what goes on out there. 25 years of flying, over 20 years as a a&P, over 20 years of being a CFI, 12,000hr without and incident accident or violation. i guess that does not qualify me as knowing what goes on out there. I do know. people like you, that violate FARs, operate unsafe aircraft, do stupit sh..t and think that the rules are a joke are out there. I see it every day in the NTSB pages. how may fuel exhaustion accidents are there. have you ever had a fuel leak? I have, what clued me in? the " useless" gauge that dropped a lot faster than it normally would. it is useless to tell me how much is in the tank, but when it was dropping a lot faster than it normally does it told me something.

i never said that you were to stupid to know the regulation, i say you are stupid for knowingly violating them, and telling others to do so.

what is really annoying is seeing people like you telling somebody that is trying to learn something and be the best pilot that they can be, that the regs dont mean squat.
 
unsafervguy said:
I just love sharing the sky (and the road) with people that think the rules dont apply to them. some of us rely on flying to feed our family. there is no way in hell im going to do something so stupid as fly an aircraft that I KNOW is unairworthy in the eyes of the FAA and risk not getting a paycheck just because i think that rule is stupid. why can I quote fars? because I am a professional and make it my business to know the rules that I need to follow. somebody asks a serious question trying to learn more about the systems in their aircraft and you pipe in telling them to ignore it in violation of the FARS. now go back to watching hee haw and making out with your sister.
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Hear! Hear!


The correct phrase for agreement versus here here.
 
Just ignore those big, red x's. That $150,000+ aircraft isn't worth it!
 
I consistently get the big red X over the same tank when operating the G1000 on battery backup or master bus only. Once I turn on the avionics bus, it goes away.
If it persisted during flight, I’d have the problem sought out & fixed.
 
I'd like to throw my hat into the ring

g1000 fail.jpg
 
OK. Relatively small X`s. But they are still red! ;)
 
The sensor is sticky. I ended up turning back at the red x. I was flying my dad around for the first time, he took the pic. It's more interesting than playing a movie. On the way back we discussed all the stuff that could cause fuel issues in a C-172 and alternate landing spots. It never really occurred to me to not discuss that stuff with pax lol. He was really into it. Wx sucked. If I had IFR I know I would have kept going. That would have been an awesome flight. KBAF is a great airport. That G1000 C-172 was $160 wet, the checkout was short and the CFI was great. I mashed the rudder around on the way back to the airport and woke up the indicator. We stayed local and flew around some cool terrain features and paragliders. ATC yelled at me. It made the whole PPL process entirely worthwhile.
 
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