So my wife, Jess, and I have essentially been holed up in the house for the last 2 days as we weathered the North Easter coastal blizzard that hit ‘ol North Carolina pretty good.
Oddly enough, in talking to Marco, who is almost 4 hours north of us, they got barely a smidgen of the snow that we got. Typically quite unusual for here, although we did a good little bit at the beginning of last year as well.
The crazy wind is what created the major varying depths of snow, with it just a few inches in some spots and over 18 inches deep in other spots.
During our time cooped up in the house, I took the time to go back through some videos on the GNS-480, HXr and Mini EFISs, as well as the Trio ProPilot autopilot to re-familiarize myself with the panel component functions… as I mentioned in my last post. I also did some more assessment of my AG6 warning annunciator systems.
In fact, I spoke with Rich, the creator of the AG6s, for over an hour about my setup and how to tweak it to what I want it to do for me. I need to get some info to Rich and he also needs to do some of his own deep dives in working out the solution to meet my requirements (hopefully).
Today, Day 3, I brought the Triparagon in from the shop to hook up power to AG6 #1 and test out all the input circuits. I haven’t reprogrammed input no. 1 for changing the Carbon Monoxide (CO) meter input out on the AG6 to the fuel pump, but I did check out the functioning as it would be with the fuel pump hooked up… and it check out fine.
Input no. 2 is the red canopy open warning (I just finished this circuit as part of the 2-relay configuration atop the relay deck) with the green “Canopy Locked” screen lighting up once that action is complete (I’ll note that in person the black lettering on the red screens is just as dark and pronounced as they are on the green screens).
I couldn’t get either the “Landing Brake DN” and “Landing Brake UP” screens of input no. 3 to fire up, so I’ll have to work that.
You might have noted the trend from above that most single inputs have a pair of alarm, warning or “ok” screens as the outputs… except for this next pair since they are actually separate circuits:
Input 4 connects to the AG6 via one of the microswitches on the throttle quadrant, so that when the throttle is closed <10% AND the gear is up, this alarm will light up (pic 1). Once the gear is down (again, a completely separate circuit), Input no. 5 lights up to verify that the gear is down (pic 2).
Now, due to the fact that these two inputs are normally a set pair on one input, I noted that I’m getting a no-color “ghost screen” flashing up from each one after I acknowledge (press the screen/button) the warning/notification.
Again, I’ll have to work with Rich to see if I can eliminate these two “ghost” screens.
Input no. 6 is RAM Air open and is an output of Relay 19, which means it lights up if I’m below 90 kts and my RAM Air valve is still open… again, I want something motivating me to close the valve as to not subject the engine air intake to any possible FOD.
And yes, there is a green “RAM Closed” screen that indicates once I close the RAM air scoop valve, I just forgot to grab a pic of it.
Tomorrow I plan on testing out the inputs on AG6 #2, and then send off my findings to Rich so we can troubleshoot the issues I’ve discovered.
Snow be damned… I’m pressing forward!