September 2, 2005

No pictures, just a story. Today, I spent about three hours of my day trying to get the EFIS 1 working with the GX-60 that Mike brought around the other day. When we initially plugged it in, it obviously didn’t work off the bat. I went home and did some reading before coming back today with the resolve to get it going. I was confident that it wouldn’t be a problem too. Well, the Vertical needle for glideslope worked fine. For some reason, the CDI wasn’t playing though.

I checked the outputs from the GX (except for the Nav Valid ones) and called Bob at Blue Mountain. He suggested I check the outputs for Nav valid. Turns out I had ’em reversed, so it would never trip the needles. In order for the needle to swing, the E1 MUST have a Nav Valid flag.

So, now that was all hunky dory, I figured it would work. Nope. Nothing. Well, there was something. For whatever reason, the sensor calibration screen showed Loc Good when the From?To flag was being raised by the GX! What’s going on?!

Bob also suggested I put everything in an email, so here is a copy….

Start of email…

Bob,> > We spoke on the phone this morning with regard to my issue of no CDI needle. I checked my wiring thoroughly (took a couple of hours) with a multimeter, and all seems to be good. I did find that I had the Nav Valid + and - switched, which obviously would not work, so I switched these over and something did happen, but not what I expected.> > Let me go over my installation first so everything is clear. I have an SL30 connected using the serial connection (Serial 2. I have FADEC into Serial 1.) I have my GX-60 and my SL-30’s analogue outputs wired to the analogue 1 on the EFIS 1 through an Apollo ACU. This is to enable me to legally fly a GPS approach using the outputs from the GX-60. Having the SL-30 connected will also serve in case a serial line goes out for whatever reason. I didn’t really need to do this part, but I’d cut my panel for the ACU way before we figured that we probably didn’t need it, so I went ahead and used it anyway.> > On the Autopilot settings, I can choose then what I want to use as the input for the External VOR. All the external options can be either SL30, or in my case ACU (was probably GX-60 originally).> > Now then, let me tell you what happened when I corrected my Nav Valid wires…. I didn’t get a CDI needle still, however, when the GX cycled on startup, when it said testing the From/To flag, the sensor cal screen showed Loc Good! This immediately prompted me to check my wiring! Maybe I’d wired the From/To into the Nav Valid. Well, ’twas not the case. The sensor cal screen shows that the GX is sending the outputs to swing the needle OK. It’s just that it’s not getting the Nav Valid for some strange reason. The Vertical stuff works perfectly!> > I couldn’t use the test mode for the GX to test the needles as it doesn’t output a Nav Valid or GS Valid signal when it swings the needles for whatever reason. I could use the test mode to calibrate the CDI/VDI though. The only way to test properly was to cycle the GX.> > For the wires from my ACU, I don’t have anything connected to the From/To at all, as there’s no inputs that I can see on the EFIS 1. On the phone, you mentioned that it did have these inputs. I looked again through the manual, but found no reference. There is a From/To input on the G3. Am I missing something here?> > I’m going to post this email to the board too in case someone else has has a similar problem and found a solution.> > Thanks for your help!> > Regards,> > Mark.

End of email…

So, watch this space. I posted this on the discussion board on the Blue Mountain site too, so maybe someone has this figured out already.