Delfin
Grand Vizier
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2010
- Messages
- 3,851
This will probably be useless information for most everyone, but in the hopes it may come in handy someday for someone....
I have a Simrad AP 25 Autopilot with an AP 27 Handheld next to the pilot's chair. For unexplained reasons, the AP 27 will allow you to plot out a route and it will auto execute at each waypoint without operator input, whereas the AP 25 requires you to acknowledge every waypoint where the turn is greater than 10 degrees if you initiate the route from the AP 25. Needless to say, the Navigate feature on the AP 27 is my preference.
However, on this trip it suddenly started generating "Comm Failure" error messages when in Navigate mode, then a couple of days later started to go blank. The AP 25 continued to work fine, but I figured I was screwed on the handheld because Simrad disposes of all spare parts for any piece of equipment they offer the day they replace it with a new one. Doesn't matter if you bought that piece of Simrad equipment a year before it was sunsetted, Simrad chucks the spare parts rather than going to the expense of providing customer service. Which, by the way, is why you should never, ever buy any product from Simrad, but be that as it may, I found the fault in my unit and it was pretty surprising.
The cable to the handheld consists of 5 tiny conductors, two of which are wrapped in aluminum foil with 2 reinforcing pull strings in the bundle, plus a braided metal shield around the whole bundle, then the insulating plastic. What I found was the source of the problem was that somehow one of those tiny stranded wires was broken inside the bundle. I have no clue how something like this could happen, but it did. Once I cut off about 12" of the cable and carefully re-attached the 5 conductors to the teenie tiny PCB plug everything is back to normal.
Like I said, a one in a million occurrence probably, but if it happened to me, it might happen to someone else on a similar piece of equipment. The tip off that a broken wire might be the problem was that jiggling the wire about 4 inches from where the cable entered the handheld would cause the unit to sporadically light up again. The fault was definitely not at the connector so I concluded it had to be in the cable bundle. Which it was.
I have a Simrad AP 25 Autopilot with an AP 27 Handheld next to the pilot's chair. For unexplained reasons, the AP 27 will allow you to plot out a route and it will auto execute at each waypoint without operator input, whereas the AP 25 requires you to acknowledge every waypoint where the turn is greater than 10 degrees if you initiate the route from the AP 25. Needless to say, the Navigate feature on the AP 27 is my preference.
However, on this trip it suddenly started generating "Comm Failure" error messages when in Navigate mode, then a couple of days later started to go blank. The AP 25 continued to work fine, but I figured I was screwed on the handheld because Simrad disposes of all spare parts for any piece of equipment they offer the day they replace it with a new one. Doesn't matter if you bought that piece of Simrad equipment a year before it was sunsetted, Simrad chucks the spare parts rather than going to the expense of providing customer service. Which, by the way, is why you should never, ever buy any product from Simrad, but be that as it may, I found the fault in my unit and it was pretty surprising.
The cable to the handheld consists of 5 tiny conductors, two of which are wrapped in aluminum foil with 2 reinforcing pull strings in the bundle, plus a braided metal shield around the whole bundle, then the insulating plastic. What I found was the source of the problem was that somehow one of those tiny stranded wires was broken inside the bundle. I have no clue how something like this could happen, but it did. Once I cut off about 12" of the cable and carefully re-attached the 5 conductors to the teenie tiny PCB plug everything is back to normal.
Like I said, a one in a million occurrence probably, but if it happened to me, it might happen to someone else on a similar piece of equipment. The tip off that a broken wire might be the problem was that jiggling the wire about 4 inches from where the cable entered the handheld would cause the unit to sporadically light up again. The fault was definitely not at the connector so I concluded it had to be in the cable bundle. Which it was.
