paul_sherry
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- Aug 16, 2017
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I'm just curious about readers experience with the reliability of the Aspen PFD's - or more accurately the whole system including the digital AHRS.
Reason for the question - I teach at a flight school that has installed Aspen's in both our Seneca's and is just putting one in our Turbo Arrow which we use for advanced training and single engine IR. We have the 'classic' PFD 1000.
Last night we came close to losing a Seneca which was on a charter flight - it had an AI failure over the sea in cloud at night. I don't have all the details yet so can't supplying anything more except to say that the aircraft lost 2000ft in short order due to a UA and on FR24 the ground speed reached 268 knots! the pilot reported a failure of the AI.
I was flying our other Seneca a few days ago and teaching some steep turns had intermittent 'Check Attitude' alerts from the Aspen. We have already had one failure of the external module on the Seneca that developed a fault last night. I have colleagues in a flying group based in Europe who generally fly IFR capable aircraft - and they have reported significant and recurring failures.
I share a Seneca V with some colleagues and before that I shared a Jetprop for 6 years. Both had Garmin G500's and I have never had any issue with the Garmin AHRS system. I have (to the best of my knowledge) never heard of a problem with Garmin AHRS systems. But I am repeatedly hearing of concerns about Aspens.
I'm not trying to lob rocks at Aspen - but it's a genuine question. Are we just being unlucky, or is there a bit of an issue here?
Thanks for any feedback.
Paul
Reason for the question - I teach at a flight school that has installed Aspen's in both our Seneca's and is just putting one in our Turbo Arrow which we use for advanced training and single engine IR. We have the 'classic' PFD 1000.
Last night we came close to losing a Seneca which was on a charter flight - it had an AI failure over the sea in cloud at night. I don't have all the details yet so can't supplying anything more except to say that the aircraft lost 2000ft in short order due to a UA and on FR24 the ground speed reached 268 knots! the pilot reported a failure of the AI.
I was flying our other Seneca a few days ago and teaching some steep turns had intermittent 'Check Attitude' alerts from the Aspen. We have already had one failure of the external module on the Seneca that developed a fault last night. I have colleagues in a flying group based in Europe who generally fly IFR capable aircraft - and they have reported significant and recurring failures.
I share a Seneca V with some colleagues and before that I shared a Jetprop for 6 years. Both had Garmin G500's and I have never had any issue with the Garmin AHRS system. I have (to the best of my knowledge) never heard of a problem with Garmin AHRS systems. But I am repeatedly hearing of concerns about Aspens.
I'm not trying to lob rocks at Aspen - but it's a genuine question. Are we just being unlucky, or is there a bit of an issue here?
Thanks for any feedback.
Paul
