Rather than take this very important thread on Pat's incident with a jammed elevator linkage in a tangential direction, I'll start a new one with a coincidental failure we had on Louise's roll servo yesterday.
Louise was off on a trip and called to tell me that her roll autopilot wasn't working. All the lights came on as if it were engaged, but there was no resistance to moving the stick in that axis. Pitch worked normally. Since we were going to inspect for the problem noted in Pat's thread anyway, I had her fly it home (recommending no loops or rolls!), and we took it apart last night. Sure enough, you could hear the servo trying to control, but nothing happened with the stick, and sure enough, when we got it out, the shear pin (a screw actually) had failed. The servo appears to be operating completely normally, the center screw was tight - the shear pin had simply failed after time.
I'm curious if anyone else has had these fail, and if they might be a life-limited item? I haven't had a problem with either servo in the -8, and plan to simply put a new pin in this servo. (BTW, anyone in Houston have a spare? I'm sure TT will send me a few next week, but then I have time to install one this weekend!)
The center screw did it's job of keeping the servo arm captured in this case, so it failed exactly as it was supposed to.
Paul
Louise was off on a trip and called to tell me that her roll autopilot wasn't working. All the lights came on as if it were engaged, but there was no resistance to moving the stick in that axis. Pitch worked normally. Since we were going to inspect for the problem noted in Pat's thread anyway, I had her fly it home (recommending no loops or rolls!), and we took it apart last night. Sure enough, you could hear the servo trying to control, but nothing happened with the stick, and sure enough, when we got it out, the shear pin (a screw actually) had failed. The servo appears to be operating completely normally, the center screw was tight - the shear pin had simply failed after time.
I'm curious if anyone else has had these fail, and if they might be a life-limited item? I haven't had a problem with either servo in the -8, and plan to simply put a new pin in this servo. (BTW, anyone in Houston have a spare? I'm sure TT will send me a few next week, but then I have time to install one this weekend!)
The center screw did it's job of keeping the servo arm captured in this case, so it failed exactly as it was supposed to.
Paul