More EFIS/EIS gremlins

Hey guys, I have read the thread concerning vendors unavailability during Oshkosh and I am having the same problems. I am posting here in hopes someone will have some answers to my problems.

I picked a bad time to have my initial flight and start Phase I. Here I am trying to troubleshoot some instrument problems while everyone is at Osh. I wish now I had gone ahead and made the trip. I thought I would be better served to spend the week flying my new 9A. However, here I am with problems and I cannot contact anyone because they are at Osh. I am sure Carlos at GRT could help me out but they will not be back in their shop until a week after Osh.

Here is a synopsis of what I have and what is going on. I have a 9A with ECI IO-340 one slick mag, one Lightspeed Plasma III, ECI FI with cold air forward facing sump, Vetterman 4 pipe exhaust. I have dual GRT HX units with dual AHRS, EIS, Garmin SL-40, Garmin GTX327, Vertical Power VP-50 power control unit, TT Digiflight II VSGV, PM3000 Intercom.

I have a couple of problems with my instruments at present. The first deals with the transponder. I am not getting an altitude signal from the GRT to the 327. I have the GRT wired from DU2 Connector A Pin 1 to 327 Pin 19. However, there is no altitude signal on the 327. Is there some configurations on the GRT and/or 327 I need to set?

The second issue is with my oil pressure and oil temperature on the EIS. The oil pressure has always been showing very high on every flight. I have the EIS max oilP set to 95 but when I am at altitude around 2400 RPM it is showing 99 psi. If I decrease the RPM's it will come down to the low 90's, at idle it may be around 75-80 psi. The oil temperature started out working well a week ago showing around 180-200 deg. However, yesterday the temp never moved off of 59 deg on the display. Last night I went up for another short flight and at start up and before run-up the temp was showing 90-100 deg. However, after I started taxiing to the runway I looked at the temp again and it was on 59 deg again. It stayed that way all during the short 15 minute flight.

This is a brand new engine with only 1.5 hours on the test stand at the engine shop, maybe 1 hour run time max on the ground and about 1.5 hours on 4 test flights. The oil temperature issue only started showing up yesterday on two short 15 minute flights. The oil pressure issue has always shown high.

I appreciate any ideas.

Steve - You might need to set the 327 to receive ICARUS data (if that's what the GRT is sending). I just had to do the same with my skyview. The 327 manual has instructions on getting to the config pages. I believe you turn the unit off, then hold FUNC and hit ON. After setting it to ICARUS and confirming correct BAUD and output format on my EFIS I restarted everything and FL006 popped right up on my 327.

Lionclaw said:

Steve - You might need to set the 327 to receive ICARUS data (if that's what the GRT is sending). I just had to do the same with my skyview. The 327 manual has instructions on getting to the config pages. I believe you turn the unit off, then hold FUNC and hit ON. After setting it to ICARUS and confirming correct BAUD and output format on my EFIS I restarted everything and FL006 popped right up on my 327.

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I am not sure what the GRT is sending. That is one of the questions I would love to ask Carlos at GRT if I could talk with him.

On pressure and temp to the EIS check your ground and signal connections. 59 normally means the signal wire is not connected and a bad ground makes the instrument read high or very high.

High oil pressure might also mean you have the oil pressure relief valve set too high.

Bubblehead said:

On pressure and temp to the EIS check your ground and signal connections. 59 normally means the signal wire is not connected and a bad ground makes the instrument read high or very high.

High oil pressure might also mean you have the oil pressure relief valve set too high.

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I have installed a ground strap around the oil pressure sender unit and run a wire to my ground terminal block. The oil temp sender is attached to the engine just below the oil filter. I do not have any additional ground to it. I figured it was grounded to the engine.

Is the oil pressure relief valve you are referring to a finger length protrusion with an adjustment screw on the end (mine is painted black)? Is it on the right side of the engine behind cylinder #3?

Yes, you are looking at the oil pressure relief valve, and it is adjustable by turning it in or out. Every turn is usally good for 3 lbs. Go clockwise to increase pressure, and counter clockwise to reduce pressure. But, I woul dencourage you to put a direct reading gauge on the line first, before you start adjusting. Your sympoms look like a sender problem. You could go down to a l ocal auto parts store and get a replacement. They are VDO and you want the 0-10 bar (0-150 psi).
As mentioned above, your altitude readout is eaither a wire or a configuration problem.

Vic

Yes you need to go through the config and properly set up serial ports (on both the GRT's display unit and your transponder). This is talked about on page 9-21 of the Horizon Install manual. In short, GRT has to be set at 9600 baud and format is Fuel/Airdata (Z format) and 327 is set to "FADC w/ ALT"

Make sure the settings "stick" on the 327.. if you're not careful, you may actually not make any changes.. verify by rebooting and going back into the Setup mode on the 327 and see that what you set is still there..

As for the senders.. sounds like a wiring issue to me. (bad crimp?)

This forum is great!

Guys, you are all fantastic! I have said it many times before but I don't think I can repeat it enough. I love this forum!

And just in case someone from this thread (http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=60659) is reading my posts here, I just got off of the telephone with Carlos and Greg from GRT. If you don't know, Greg is the owner of GRT. They both took the time to talk with me while at their booth at Oshkosh about my problems.

I was in the same boat as those on the above mentioned thread about being able to contact GRT since they were all at Oshkosh. So, I had this great idea that I would call one of my friends on his cell phone who was attending Oshkosh. I asked him if he might be able to walk over to the GRT booth and see if he could talk with Carlos. If so, call me on his cell phone so I could ask Carlos these questions.

Well, low and behold about 30 minutes after talking with my friend I had a call on my phone from Carlos. So, standing right there with all of the hub-bub of the vendor booths in the background I discussed my problems with him about the transponder. Radomir, he told me exactly what you just posted concerning the configuration for the EFIS and the 327. However, in addition to this configuration he also told me that since I had the AHRS 1 (Pin 3) hooked up to the DU2 serial input 6 (pin24), my 327 would not work on the DU2 serial out 6 (pin 1) since these two are communicating at different BAUD rates (AHRS - 19900, 327 - 9600). He informed me I will need to move the 327 to a spare serial out port (Serial out 4, DU2 connector A pin 5).

After discussing this with Carlos he felt it better if Greg discuss my oil Pres/Temp issues. So 5 minutes after Carlos hung up Greg called me. I discussed with him my problems with the oil pressure/temperature. He had a spare temp sensor and a spare pressure sender unit that he is going to mail to me today from Oshkosh.

I have felt some of the same feelings about not being able to talk with these guys because they were at Oshkosh as others have posted. But since I had friends at the show who I could talk with via cell phone I was able to talk directly to GRT and get some answers. It was icing on the cake that Greg is also sending me replacement sender units for my setup.

GUYS, THAT IS WHAT I CALL SERVICE!!!

Mode C Transponder Check?

RVbySDI said:

HI picked a bad time to have my initial flight and start Phase I.

I have a couple of problems with my instruments at present. The first deals with the transponder. I am not getting an altitude signal from the GRT to the 327. I have the GRT wired from DU2 Connector A Pin 1 to 327 Pin 19. However, there is no altitude signal on the 327. Is there some configurations on the GRT and/or 327 I need to set?

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So it sounds like you are just discovering during flight testing that you haven't properly configured your GTX327 and the GRT for altitude encoding. It seems that this should have shown up during your Pitot/Static/Transponder check and not during flight testing. Did you skip having that done? If so, are you operating outside of controlled airspace?

Skylor
RV-8

skylor said:

So it sounds like you are just discovering during flight testing that you haven't properly configured your GTX327 and the GRT for altitude encoding. It seems that this should have shown up during your Pitot/Static/Transponder check and not during flight testing. Did you skip having that done? If so, are you operating outside of controlled airspace?

Skylor
RV-8

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Yes, I am outside controlled airspace. Things would have transpired a lot differently had I been dealing with ATC in the manner you guys in SoCal have to do. I would have been a lot more nervous than I already have been on my initial flights had I been dealing with air traffic control. I have been contacting ATC while staying outside the airspace which is what led me to the problem with altitude encoding.

Glad you made s much progress Steve - I just saw this thread after answering your PM (just got back to the hotel after a full OSH day), and I see you got PLENTY of quality help already....

Paul

Ironflight said:

Glad you made s much progress Steve - I just saw this thread after answering your PM (just got back to the hotel after a full OSH day), and I see you got PLENTY of quality help already....

Paul

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Yes, got to love this community.

continuing problems.

Guys, I am refreshing this thread rather than starting a new one as I am having problems that are still related to my original question(s) on this thread.

I am still having problems with configuring my Dual GRT HX units with my Garmin GTX327 transponder. The transponder is not sending out an altitude signal. I had talked with Carlos at GRT while he was at Oshkosh and got some helpful information but I am still not able to get this functionality working and I cannot contact Carlos until he gets back to the GRT shop next Monday (unless he happens to see this post and decides to contact me).

I understand I have to set up the GRT to send out fuel/air data Z format and set up the 327 to FADC w/ ALT. However, before I can get to that I have to get the 327 serial connection to the correct serial port on the GRT. Right now I have the 327 connected to the second Display Unit (DU2) Connector A Pin 1 (Serial Out 6 - RS232 Altitude Encoder Output) according to the "EFIS Horizion Cable Description Dual Display Unit EFIS System" instructions.

The problem with this is that on that same DU2 Connector A Pin 24 (Serial Input 6 - RS232 Input - Spare - Secondary AHRS Input (Future Growth for weather or traffic) I have the AHRS1 connected. This port is set at a 19200 BAUD rate. The 327 needs a 9600 BAUD rate. If I try to change the OUTPUT setting on port 6 to the fuel/air data Z format in the DU2 I get an error message stating there is a conflict with serial port 2 and 6.

Carlos had told me I could change the 327 to port 4. This port is configured for the 9600 BAUD rate but I have a similar problem with that port as the EIS is setup on Pin 24 (Serial Input 4 - RS232 EIS Engine Monitor Serial Data Input). If I change the output to the fuel/air data Z format I get a similar error message as above stating there is a conflict with the port.

It seems that following the above mentioned instruction document from GRT is not allowing me to use the 327 on an output port while another system is using that same port's input.

I have yet to physically move the wiring from pin 1 to another pin as I would like to make sure it will function there before I try to get to the back of my instruments and remove/insert the wiring into different pins.

Does anyone out there have any ideas on what I can do to get the altitude info to the 327?

hmmm guess this needs a bump

I was really hoping someone might reply to my query overnight.

Really, does anyone have any thoughts on my dilemma?

Go back to the "old" port that you weren't gonna use any more and set its Out to OFF... and have only one port (the new one) with this particular setting. The conflict message is simply saying you have two ports set up to send out same info... Pick one and either put somethign else on the old one or set it to off.

Radomir said:

Go back to the "old" port that you weren't gonna use any more and set its Out to OFF... and have only one port (the new one) with this particular setting. The conflict message is simply saying you have two ports set up to send out same info... Pick one and either put somethign else on the old one or set it to off.

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Doh! You are exactly right. I forgot to turn off the old port. Thanks so much, I have been flustered for way to long on such a simple solution.

I think I need a vacation from my hobby!