"Paul, come listen to this - I don't think this is right!" Louise was getting ready to fly to work on a Monday morning a couple of weeks ago, and had just flipped on her essential avionics power to get ready to go. Sure enough, as I walked up to the airplane, I heard a sound like a tiny electric motor whirring and buzzing - and the pitch needle on her ADI Pilot II was buried against the ceiling. This was not good - not for the instrument, and not for our plans to depart on a major trip in just five days! A power cycle didn't make any difference, so clearly, we had a hardware failure. A quick ground check of the autopilot showed that it was not trying to drive in pitch, so this appeared to be an indication failure in the ADI only. Louise decided to drive to work and leave the airplane so that I could try and work the problem and get us ready to fly the trip.
It didn't take long to get a hold of Lucas at Tru Trak as soon as they opened, and he had no questions about the need to get the unit returned. We agreed I'd get it to them overnight and they'd do a same-day turn-around to get it back to us, with the only cost to us being the delta cost of overnight shipping. I "assumed the position" to remove the unit, and discovered that when we built the new panel, I hadn't left quite enough room to get the ADI backed out of its hole before it bumped into a reinforcing angle I had installed to strengthen the previously-butchered sub-panel (years of panel mods take their toll on an airframe). I puzzled on the problem for a bit, and realized that "puzzle" really was a good word - Chinese puzzle to be exact. I realized that I could remove the ADI if the altimeter was out of the way - but to get the altimeter out, I had to move the VSI...and to get it out, I needed to loosen the CDI head. Dang back-ups....
All this really didn't add but a few minutes to the removal, and before long, I was on the way to the local package place to send it off FedEx.
I'll skip the story of how FedEx lost the package overnight, and therefore got it to Tru Trak a day late. Suffice to say, I wasn't happy...until Lucas assured me that we could still get it all done in time! He actually offered to send me a new unit instead of fixing ours, but after talking about it, we realized that the latest ADI Pilot II design differs slightly from the early unit we had. The Pitot/Static connections are now on a block which extends out the back of the case, instead of being right on the case itself. Given that I had virtually no clearance to work with, and little time to do any mods, I decided that I'd rather have the old unit fixed, and he accommodated. We had a shipper tracking number that afternoon, and the box showed up the next day, beating our departure deadline by 24 hours. Now THAT is responsive customer service!
Unfortunately, the need to have the old unit repaired is probably what got us into our next trouble - when we re-installed it, the turn horizon was rolled off 30 degrees, and the pitch indicator jittered like it had drank about a gallon of coffee. Fortunately, the autopilot functions worked just fine, and they continued to do so for the nearly 4,000 mile cross-country we flew the following week. As the ADI is a backup to a backup, I was not too concerned, and Lucas agreed we could deal with it when we got home.
Once we returned, this was on the top of our list (since ?Mikey? is Louise?s ?daily commuter?), and Lucas once again came to the rescue. Since I was concerned about fitting the new design into the panel, he suggested that he'd just ship us one to see if I could make it work. If it fit, I could ship the old unit back and we'd be done. If not, I'd send them both in, save some shipping, and get the old one repaired with less time pressure. Since the plane was obviously flyable the way it was, we elected for Tru Trak to pick up the ground shipping and take a couple extra days this time.
Sure enough, the new unit showed up in just two days (there is no predicting actual shipping times?.) and it was time once again to go diving under the panel. I was experienced by now, and removing everything was a matter of a few minutes. Sliding the new unit in place, I discovered that it physically fit ? but that I?d have to do a bit of panel grinding to get nylon connectors and pitot/static lines installed. Out came the die grinder, air hose, and other implements of destruction, along with the shop-vac to try and collect most of the filings before they fell to the cockpit floor. This worked pretty well, but it didn?t negate the need for me to wear a dust mask and eye protection, as nothing was going to get to the floor without going through me first. Ear plugs and hearing protectors were also essential ? have you ever used a die grinder in an enclosed fuselage space?!
Because the new design located the pitot and static ports right next to each other, instead of on opposite sides of the case, I had to do a little re-routing of lines. The two ports are close enough together that you can?t use two elbows right off the back, as there is no way to turn the second one with the first in place, so you need to use two straights, or an elbow and a straight, then adapt from there. Not a big deal. Reassembly was a matter of an hour, followed by another half hour of clean-up. Power on ? and all was well!
While it is never good for a company (or a customer) to have a piece of equipment fail, it is nice to know that when it does (and it WILL happen), the company is there to stand behind it and give a customer the kind of support they need to get an airplane back in the air. Louise and I use our planes almost every day, and down time is always a problem, so we look for companies that can respond quickly ? Tru Trak sure did this in our case!
Thanks Lucas,
Paul
It didn't take long to get a hold of Lucas at Tru Trak as soon as they opened, and he had no questions about the need to get the unit returned. We agreed I'd get it to them overnight and they'd do a same-day turn-around to get it back to us, with the only cost to us being the delta cost of overnight shipping. I "assumed the position" to remove the unit, and discovered that when we built the new panel, I hadn't left quite enough room to get the ADI backed out of its hole before it bumped into a reinforcing angle I had installed to strengthen the previously-butchered sub-panel (years of panel mods take their toll on an airframe). I puzzled on the problem for a bit, and realized that "puzzle" really was a good word - Chinese puzzle to be exact. I realized that I could remove the ADI if the altimeter was out of the way - but to get the altimeter out, I had to move the VSI...and to get it out, I needed to loosen the CDI head. Dang back-ups....
All this really didn't add but a few minutes to the removal, and before long, I was on the way to the local package place to send it off FedEx.I'll skip the story of how FedEx lost the package overnight, and therefore got it to Tru Trak a day late. Suffice to say, I wasn't happy...until Lucas assured me that we could still get it all done in time! He actually offered to send me a new unit instead of fixing ours, but after talking about it, we realized that the latest ADI Pilot II design differs slightly from the early unit we had. The Pitot/Static connections are now on a block which extends out the back of the case, instead of being right on the case itself. Given that I had virtually no clearance to work with, and little time to do any mods, I decided that I'd rather have the old unit fixed, and he accommodated. We had a shipper tracking number that afternoon, and the box showed up the next day, beating our departure deadline by 24 hours. Now THAT is responsive customer service!
Unfortunately, the need to have the old unit repaired is probably what got us into our next trouble - when we re-installed it, the turn horizon was rolled off 30 degrees, and the pitch indicator jittered like it had drank about a gallon of coffee. Fortunately, the autopilot functions worked just fine, and they continued to do so for the nearly 4,000 mile cross-country we flew the following week. As the ADI is a backup to a backup, I was not too concerned, and Lucas agreed we could deal with it when we got home.
Once we returned, this was on the top of our list (since ?Mikey? is Louise?s ?daily commuter?), and Lucas once again came to the rescue. Since I was concerned about fitting the new design into the panel, he suggested that he'd just ship us one to see if I could make it work. If it fit, I could ship the old unit back and we'd be done. If not, I'd send them both in, save some shipping, and get the old one repaired with less time pressure. Since the plane was obviously flyable the way it was, we elected for Tru Trak to pick up the ground shipping and take a couple extra days this time.
Sure enough, the new unit showed up in just two days (there is no predicting actual shipping times?.) and it was time once again to go diving under the panel. I was experienced by now, and removing everything was a matter of a few minutes. Sliding the new unit in place, I discovered that it physically fit ? but that I?d have to do a bit of panel grinding to get nylon connectors and pitot/static lines installed. Out came the die grinder, air hose, and other implements of destruction, along with the shop-vac to try and collect most of the filings before they fell to the cockpit floor. This worked pretty well, but it didn?t negate the need for me to wear a dust mask and eye protection, as nothing was going to get to the floor without going through me first. Ear plugs and hearing protectors were also essential ? have you ever used a die grinder in an enclosed fuselage space?!
Because the new design located the pitot and static ports right next to each other, instead of on opposite sides of the case, I had to do a little re-routing of lines. The two ports are close enough together that you can?t use two elbows right off the back, as there is no way to turn the second one with the first in place, so you need to use two straights, or an elbow and a straight, then adapt from there. Not a big deal. Reassembly was a matter of an hour, followed by another half hour of clean-up. Power on ? and all was well!
While it is never good for a company (or a customer) to have a piece of equipment fail, it is nice to know that when it does (and it WILL happen), the company is there to stand behind it and give a customer the kind of support they need to get an airplane back in the air. Louise and I use our planes almost every day, and down time is always a problem, so we look for companies that can respond quickly ? Tru Trak sure did this in our case!
Thanks Lucas,
Paul
