Ok so here I go exposing myself to the flame thrower to hopefully help someone else avoid my SNAFU.
I departed In my -10 at night on a stormy, night IFR flight plan for a 50 minute hop home after a long duty day as a corpotate jet jock. I climbed into the clouds around 2000? climbing to 10?000? and upon entering the soup, the landing light was glaring off the clouds. I reached up to turn it off and grabbed the avionics master instead. The G3 and all three displays went black as did the com radio just as ATC was issuing a change to my clearance.
Luckily I had added a G5 with it?s battery backup shortly after buying the plane. I immediately went into mental reversionary mode and began hand flying while the G3x system ran through the reboot process. It was a long 2-3 minutes for the ADAHRS to realign and even longer for the Garmin 650 to join the fun.
There was never a time that I was not flying the plane just fine but I have spent a lifetime in the soup and with 24,000 hours, it still required me to focus on the G5 to stay right side up and on course.
My jet co-captain said, ?you know an inexperienced pilot could wake up dead in this situation?.
As a professional pilot, I am duty bound to review my performance and to be brutally honest to myself. The factors were simple.
1. I was tired. I am in my 60?s and after a 14 hour duty day, I was not at 100%.
2. My -10 has three switches next to each other, avionics master, nav/strobe, and landing light. With only limited night time in my newly acquired -10, the muscle memory to grab the correct switch failed me.
3. The lighting in my -10 is weak at best. The switches are not lighted and there is no under panel flood. I relied on a flashlight to ID the right switch and didn?t even turn it on as I was sure I had the right switch. (Did I mention that I am old and was tired?)
This episode had a happy ending mostly due to the instincts developed over a career of good habits. 1. Fly the plane, 2.fly the damned plane, 3, fly the GD airplane.
I am adding lighted switches and under dash lighting.
I hope this helps someone else to stay safe,...flames on.
I departed In my -10 at night on a stormy, night IFR flight plan for a 50 minute hop home after a long duty day as a corpotate jet jock. I climbed into the clouds around 2000? climbing to 10?000? and upon entering the soup, the landing light was glaring off the clouds. I reached up to turn it off and grabbed the avionics master instead. The G3 and all three displays went black as did the com radio just as ATC was issuing a change to my clearance.
Luckily I had added a G5 with it?s battery backup shortly after buying the plane. I immediately went into mental reversionary mode and began hand flying while the G3x system ran through the reboot process. It was a long 2-3 minutes for the ADAHRS to realign and even longer for the Garmin 650 to join the fun.
There was never a time that I was not flying the plane just fine but I have spent a lifetime in the soup and with 24,000 hours, it still required me to focus on the G5 to stay right side up and on course.
My jet co-captain said, ?you know an inexperienced pilot could wake up dead in this situation?.
As a professional pilot, I am duty bound to review my performance and to be brutally honest to myself. The factors were simple.
1. I was tired. I am in my 60?s and after a 14 hour duty day, I was not at 100%.
2. My -10 has three switches next to each other, avionics master, nav/strobe, and landing light. With only limited night time in my newly acquired -10, the muscle memory to grab the correct switch failed me.
3. The lighting in my -10 is weak at best. The switches are not lighted and there is no under panel flood. I relied on a flashlight to ID the right switch and didn?t even turn it on as I was sure I had the right switch. (Did I mention that I am old and was tired?)
This episode had a happy ending mostly due to the instincts developed over a career of good habits. 1. Fly the plane, 2.fly the damned plane, 3, fly the GD airplane.
I am adding lighted switches and under dash lighting.
I hope this helps someone else to stay safe,...flames on.