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VP-200 is dead

Great News! I got the DU back today from a guy who wanted to try his hand at it - and he fixed it!
I've got it back in the airplane, and everything is working perfectly. A little cloudy today, so I'll take it up tomorrow and give it a full checkout.
Thanks for all the support from the community.

John
 
It was a failure on the DU motherboard, caused by vibration. He had to replace a part. He also stated that it looked like somebody had done a modification on the board - I told him that I didn't think so, but Aerotronics may have returned the unit in the 9 months it was in their possession.
Anyway, it's working again!

John
 
Reliable enough for IFR?

But....how can you now trust it?
I helped a friend install a VPX, they wanted ignition power and the boost pump run thru the box as well. I was able to talk my friend out of letting it control those functions.
I'm familiar with all or most of the smart functions vertical power offers, but personally I would never trade that for simple reliability.
Tim
 
tim2542 said:
But....how can you now trust it?
I helped a friend install a VPX, they wanted ignition power and the boost pump run thru the box as well. I was able to talk my friend out of letting it control those functions.
I'm familiar with all or most of the smart functions vertical power offers, but personally I would never trade that for simple reliability.
Tim
Click to expand...

What kind of ignition? I have a VP with Pmags. If the VP CU fails my ignition is no going to stop. The internal altenators run it above about 600rpm's. Then with a couple VP passthru circuits you still have a couple backup's for electric.

Not real familiar with the VP200, but would assume they have much more backup then my old VP100.

It would be great if the "VP Fixer Person" could make a post on his findings and solution.

As you indicated....was it a simple remove and replace,emt of the motherboard? Or was it something that only a guru could fix??? Eitherway, really great story that one of our VAFer's offered and came to the rescue! That guy deserves a VAF Salute !
 
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For those of you who are interested, I can give you the e-mail of the guy who fixed my Display Unit - just send me a private message, and I'll give it to you.
John
 
johngoodman said:
Great News! I got the DU back today from a guy who wanted to try his hand at it - and he fixed it!
I've got it back in the airplane, and everything is working perfectly. A little cloudy today, so I'll take it up tomorrow and give it a full checkout.
Thanks for all the support from the community.

John
Click to expand...

That is great news. It's always best to have a knowledgeable technician look over the broken stuff and evaluate the nature of a failure.

Surprisingly, electronics can often leave 'tells' on the board when components fail but it's becoming more difficult to replace the component as circuits get smaller. The good news is that smaller production runs are not as likely to become as miniature as soon as large (mass) production which justifies the expense of 'small' devices. Electronics for the experimental market, by their nature, may be more repairable than the latest cell phone, for example.

The VAF community has strength.
 
VP-200 repair

To those who interested. It was no display clock signal output from processor so before giving up it was sent to PCB assembly shop we deal with to re-flow BGA processor.

in cars this happening due to bad assembly quality in this case i think it was vibration related as i see couple of things on motherboard that had signs of exposure to prolonged vibration.

in this case no parts needed replacement

there is no problem to fix it as long as all parts containing program code are ok
if they fail this could be a problem as code extraction is possible but veeeerrry expensive
 
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