New Aspen E5 - In-Flight Crash and Reset

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bd95r

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bd95r
New to posting here....but hoping to get some help.

Earlier this year I took the plunge and did an avionics upgrade that included a new avidyne ifd440 and a new Aspen E5.

Unfortunately, since then my new Aspen E5 has been performing poorly in the 9 months since installation. I recently found and reached out to another Aspen E5 customer that is going through similar problems with his new Aspen E5....I am looking to see if other Aspen E5 customers are experiencing similar issues to help find the root cause.

While Aspen has been responsive in trying to resolve the issue I will describe below.....I am posting here to try and get the word out to see if others are experiencing the same problems with the Aspen E5 to see if the community can shed some more light on what is going on with the Aspen E5.

**** So, here goes ::::: I'm now on my 3rd Aspen E5 unit since Feb 2019.

I've had 3 in-flight E5 restarts ( 1 on each E5 )...the E5 just goes blank and reset as if it was normal:

1st reset) On final approach to rwy in Feb - approach power/RPM, gear going down:::E5 replaced by Aspen in Mar

2nd reset) In cruise at ~8k ft in Sept - cruise power/RPM:::E5 replaced again by Aspen + New (blue) shielded RSM cable Nov - cable length less than 12 feet.

3rd reset) On departure at ~5k ft in Dec - high power/RPM:::Logs downloaded and sent to Aspen. Logs seem clean to me but Aspen has yet to review and make a root cause determination

Some background info:
- I've flown about 80 hours since original E5 install
- E5 is just connected to an ifd440 and an Stec-30 via the Aspen ACU
- I have the original 910-00003-002 RSM (E5/Top Mount) installed
- I get no indication on anything in the plane that a reset is pending...ie, dim lights, GPS error, etc
- Seems that there is no correlation in the events for the in-flight reset
- I reviewed the logs sent to Aspen....I can see nothing other than what appear to be normal bootups
- I have looked at the disgnotics page and see nothing out of what I would expect to be normal
- E5 MAP software was 2.10 during all of this
- E5 has a backup battery but never "goes to battery", ie like in a loss of power situation
- There is no ADSB-In info being fed into the system...I use a portable stratus and ipad/foreflight for weather/traffic.

If anyone has any ideas or has experienced any E5 issues, please feel free to reply.
 
Have seen numerous people report reboots in flight on Aspen stuff over the years.

Some were told to send the units in for repair, others found it was heat related and slammed more air around behind the panel with avionics fans, one said it happened consistently from bad data from the magnetometer and had it moved.

Can be all sorts of things unfortunately.
 
It got better. So what's the problem? ;)

Well+she+turned+me+into+a+newt+_81d7aaa9c37dd02d4a34d239f3281220.png
 
Thanks. You just helped me with my upgrading decision by eliminating one of the options. Seriously, I’ve heard this thing before they claimed they had it fixed. I am not in electronics engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that this is a major malfunction that should not happen
 
Wonder if aspen has a “special” relationship with the FAA like Boeing?

Seems much smaller places have been dragged through the coals for waaaay less.
 
Any software driven item is going to have bugs. They will (eventually) get fixed, until the next time. My NGT-9000 got hit with a GPS rollover coding issue, and the fallout from that took two software revisions and several months to fix. In the interim, nothing on the ADSB-in side worked reliably. The G5 had a power off issue (it wouldn't) and that took a couple of revisions to fix. Both are working great for now.

With dual G5s, one can bork and the other will work. But if an E5 fails, it takes down everything. Redundancy is good. This potential issue, among other considerations, is why I went with G5s instead of the E5.
 
I am holding out for the avionics AV 30. But I see your point with the G5.
 
I've had my E5 since January. I have had zero issues with it so far. It was one of the very first batches to get shipped out. I recently upgraded it to the new firmware (2.11) that unlocks the HSI, and I have the Air Data unlock card on its way. Just wanted to add a data point.
 
bd95r said:
New to posting here....but hoping to get some help.

Earlier this year I took the plunge and did an avionics upgrade that included a new avidyne ifd440 and a new Aspen E5.

Unfortunately, since then my new Aspen E5 has been performing poorly in the 9 months since installation. I recently found and reached out to another Aspen E5 customer that is going through similar problems with his new Aspen E5....I am looking to see if other Aspen E5 customers are experiencing similar issues to help find the root cause.

While Aspen has been responsive in trying to resolve the issue I will describe below.....I am posting here to try and get the word out to see if others are experiencing the same problems with the Aspen E5 to see if the community can shed some more light on what is going on with the Aspen E5.

**** So, here goes ::::: I'm now on my 3rd Aspen E5 unit since Feb 2019.

I've had 3 in-flight E5 restarts ( 1 on each E5 )...the E5 just goes blank and reset as if it was normal:

1st reset) On final approach to rwy in Feb - approach power/RPM, gear going down:::E5 replaced by Aspen in Mar

2nd reset) In cruise at ~8k ft in Sept - cruise power/RPM:::E5 replaced again by Aspen + New (blue) shielded RSM cable Nov - cable length less than 12 feet.

3rd reset) On departure at ~5k ft in Dec - high power/RPM:::Logs downloaded and sent to Aspen. Logs seem clean to me but Aspen has yet to review and make a root cause determination

Some background info:
- I've flown about 80 hours since original E5 install
- E5 is just connected to an ifd440 and an Stec-30 via the Aspen ACU
- I have the original 910-00003-002 RSM (E5/Top Mount) installed
- I get no indication on anything in the plane that a reset is pending...ie, dim lights, GPS error, etc
- Seems that there is no correlation in the events for the in-flight reset
- I reviewed the logs sent to Aspen....I can see nothing other than what appear to be normal bootups
- I have looked at the disgnotics page and see nothing out of what I would expect to be normal
- E5 MAP software was 2.10 during all of this
- E5 has a backup battery but never "goes to battery", ie like in a loss of power situation
- There is no ADSB-In info being fed into the system...I use a portable stratus and ipad/foreflight for weather/traffic.

If anyone has any ideas or has experienced any E5 issues, please feel free to reply.
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We are having almost identical issues in a 1994 Saratoga II HP with a legacy KAP150 autopilot, the EA100, and a GTN750 for a navigator. Aspen customer support has replaced the E5 once, with no effect - the problem still occurs. When I ask customer support about similar reports, they don't seem to recall yours. Can you post who you have been dealing with, and then I can do the same.
 
Paul Volk said:
We are having almost identical issues in a 1994 Saratoga II HP with a legacy KAP150 autopilot, the EA100, and a GTN750 for a navigator. Aspen customer support has replaced the E5 once, with no effect - the problem still occurs. When I ask customer support about similar reports, they don't seem to recall yours. Can you post who you have been dealing with, and then I can do the same.
Click to expand...

Hey Paul...There has been a lot of action lately from Aspen on this topic. A good place to start is with Andy Smith from Aspen. He has posted a company statement on Beechtalk and Mooneyspace about the reboot issue and what they are currently doing to address the issue.

https://mooneyspace.com/topic/32905-aspen-pro-max-issues-communication-from-aspen-avionics/
 
bd95r said:
Hey Paul...There has been a lot of action lately from Aspen on this topic. A good place to start is with Andy Smith from Aspen. He has posted a company statement on Beechtalk and Mooneyspace about the reboot issue and what they are currently doing to address the issue.

https://mooneyspace.com/topic/32905-aspen-pro-max-issues-communication-from-aspen-avionics/
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Thanks for the link to Andy Smith's announcement, very interesting. The Aspen customer support rep I've been working with confirmed. Aspen seems to be treating in-flight reboots like an exception rather than an epidemic. Do you get any feedback that these incidents are small in number compared to the overall installed base? We have been requested to have an Aspen dealer get a "download" from our E5 to send back for analysis. Did you get the same request? We cannot comply for about another week or so after our plane comes out of annual. It would be nice to know that Aspen has download data from other sources to analyze.
 
Just a suggestion, look for a solution offering a track by heading in addition to GPS tracking. Some set-ups leave only GPS track as nav source, when IFR we commonly get vectors. A lot of pilots who fly VFR this is sufficient.
 
Paul Volk said:
We are having almost identical issues in a 1994 Saratoga II HP with a legacy KAP150 autopilot, the EA100, and a GTN750 for a navigator. Aspen customer support has replaced the E5 once, with no effect - the problem still occurs. When I ask customer support about similar reports, they don't seem to recall yours. Can you post who you have been dealing with, and then I can do the same.
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Makes a pilot think twice about any aviation product with the word MAX in it. :7)
 
There have been lots of E5 / Aspen posts lately and just wanted to get an update out there.

Aspen delivered an updated E5 ( with the new 2.11 software ) to my shop and was able to get it installed today.

I have just 30 min on the new unit but no issues so far....Aspen has been responsive to the issue and feels like we are moving forward.
 
Not to pile on to Aspen, because I think this will probably be worked out to everyone's satisfaction down the road, but unless you're running two E5s you're not looking at the same level of redundancy offered by dual G5s.

Dual G5s offer auto reversion between two identical pieces of hardware, each with battery backups. That means to compare similar levels of redundancy you'd have to price out two E5s vs. a dual G5 setup. Garmin wins that price battle quite easily.

I have always viewed the Garmin concept to be superior in terms of redundancy and reliability. The E5 does have all sorts of neat features available, but none of that matters too much compared to redundancy and reliability of the core system.
 
This thread got me wondering. If you loose your flight display doesn’t the NTSB need to be notified?



FAR 830.5 (9): (9) A complete loss of information, excluding flickering, from more than 50 percent of an aircraft's cockpit displays known as:

(i) Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) displays;

(ii) Engine Indication and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) displays;

(iii) Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) displays; or

(iv) Other displays of this type, which generally include a primary flight display (PFD), primary navigation display (PND), and other integrated displays;


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Ryan F. said:
Not to pile on to Aspen, because I think this will probably be worked out to everyone's satisfaction down the road, but unless you're running two E5s you're not looking at the same level of redundancy offered by dual G5s.

Dual G5s offer auto reversion between two identical pieces of hardware, each with battery backups. That means to compare similar levels of redundancy you'd have to price out two E5s vs. a dual G5 setup. Garmin wins that price battle quite easily.

I have always viewed the Garmin concept to be superior in terms of redundancy and reliability. The E5 does have all sorts of neat features available, but none of that matters too much compared to redundancy and reliability of the core system.
Click to expand...

In agreement with your post although I don't think you need to have dual E5s for reliability. Something like an AV20s for less than $900 would suffice as a good backup.
 
Flybuddy said:
In agreement with your post although I don't think you need to have dual E5s for reliability. Something like an AV20s for less than $900 would suffice as a good backup.
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Yes that would work, but most of us who only have one Aspen( original Pro 1000) have backups by STC anyway, whether the static/pitot gauges and retention of their vacuum system AIs, so no biggie. Not sure if the E5 is governed by the same STC for IFR flight.
 
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MajorTurbulence said:
Yes that would work, but most of us who only have one Aspen( original Pro 1000) have backups by STC anyway, whether the static/pitot gauges and retention of their vacuum system AIs, so no biggie. Not sure if the E5 is governed by the same STC for IFR flight.
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My E5 didn’t require any backups for IFR but I did have to leave the turn coordinator, airspeed and altimeter in the airplane. I dropped my vacuum system totally though. And let’s be honest we practice partial panel during ifr training for a reason. We should be practicing partial panel as part of our currency anyways.
Is this still crummy? Yeah. And I say that as a big fan of Aspen who loves his E5. But I am also planning on an AV20 in my panel as a backup. Just in case. Thankfully my early production unit hasn’t experienced this yet but I do worry that it will. I am still happy that I went this route over a G5 because of the display quality and a few other things. 99.9 percent of the time I own this thing I will be staring at it so it being usable was more important than having reversion. If I do have issues, I’ll go back to my training and currency and fly partial panel during ifr or switch over to the av20.
 
Lynn Dixon said:
My E5 didn’t require any backups for IFR but I did have to leave the turn coordinator, airspeed and altimeter in the airplane. I dropped my vacuum system totally though. And let’s be honest we practice partial panel during ifr training for a reason. We should be practicing partial panel as part of our currency anyways.
Is this still crummy? Yeah. And I say that as a big fan of Aspen who loves his E5. But I am also planning on an AV20 in my panel as a backup. Just in case. Thankfully my early production unit hasn’t experienced this yet but I do worry that it will. I am still happy that I went this route over a G5 because of the display quality and a few other things. 99.9 percent of the time I own this thing I will be staring at it so it being usable was more important than having reversion. If I do have issues, I’ll go back to my training and currency and fly partial panel during ifr or switch over to the av20.
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Sorry about the extra worries. I have faith in Aspen as they have always come through in the past. My ability to get rid of the vacuum pump and vacuum gauge will occur when the AV30 becomes certified since it can be a source for attitude data for my legacy autopilot as well.
 
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