J

jte65

Well Known Member
After almost exactly one year of trouble-free operation, my Dynon D180 failed this weeked. I went to turn it on and it would not get past the initial blue start-up screen. On internal power, it just shut back off. On external power, it repeatedly cycled between the blue start-up screen and off. Just got off the phone with Dynon and it has to go back for service. They tell me this is not a one-off but rather, something they have observed with a number of units but have not been able to reproduce on the bench. As such, the cause remains unclear.

In any event, all of my settings (including fuel calibration) will be lost and I don't think I backed anything up since my last firmware upgrade, which was done prior to my first flight (and I think prior to my fuel calibration). Very painful to have to redo those things. I will definitely run a backup this time once I have everything set again! I did record all resistance readings when I did the fuel calibration but they tell me that there is no way to manually enter these. Not sure why Van's PAP instructs you to record them if they cannot be input manually.

My condition inspection was due the end of the month- guess it will start early! I will use the opportunity to relocate my serial connection for D180 updates!

Anyone else had this problem with their D180?

Jeff
 
EMS D-10

May not be the same, but my EMS failed and needed to go back - they were able to get the settings off of it for me - I had a backup, but the new unit had a new serial # and the backups are specific to a Serial #. They worked some magic and I was back in bizness.

Ask them if they can get the settings and save them before they wipe it - you might get lucky.

The Dynon guys have always been great to work with!
 
Fuel Sender Calibration - Another Way

My D-180 failed just prior to first flight, and naturally right after my fuel sender calibration.

Dynon's excellent customer service sent me a replacement, and instead of going through the whole "add 2 gallons at a time and press the button fuel sender calibration routine" again, I used an old potentiometer I had in the junk box, and my original resistance(Actually millivolt as I recall) readings I had recorded and by substituting the potentiometer with my multimeter across it in place of the fuel sender I quickly reprogrammed the D-180's fuel sender calibration. My fuel level readings are fairly accurate.
 
My screen would get white lines shooting across it and i sent it in. Good news they fixed and returned it quick. Bad news is it started doing it again. :mad:
 
Good Idea

by substituting the potentiometer with my multimeter across it in place of the fuel sender I quickly reprogrammed the D-180's fuel sender calibration.
Click to expand...
Andy J,
Good going. I admire your ingenuity. You saved yourself a lot of work.
Joe Gores
 
My D10 suffered from a horizontal snow storm at 300 hours...

I , like Larry Geiger, suffered a snow storm two or three months back. I talked to Dynon and they said they would fix it and return it immediately, but it was too close to OSH and I didn't want to miss an Oshkosh trip. As soon as I was back from Oshkosh I sent the unit right in and Dynon jumped right into action.

They saved all my settings, updated the software to the latest and greatest and replaced a font panel tab that assisted in the unit removal. Great service at a great price. The people at Dynon are first class.

A greatful customer...

Jay Sluiter
N124CS
Albany, OR
 
The only thing better than great service is not needing service in the first place. Does anyone with tons of EFIS experience across vendors have any data (even anecdotal) on failure rates of the various systems? My Dynons have been rock solid so far, but have only 80 hours at this point.

-Rob
 
My 180 works great 99.9% of the time. Occasionally I have seen the unit "freeze" when I have been acknowledging multiple error messages, like on the ground before start-up. Anyone else seen this behavior?
 
Joe,
Thanks for the compliment - I was feeling proud of my "Macgiver" skills that day.

My D-180 problem was an intermittant autopilot and we weren't sure of the cause, so had to troubleshoot by substituting an AP-74, and then D-180 using advance replacement units. It would have further delayed my first flight had I sent my unit to them and waited for them to clone the replacement. I was very pleased it was not a servo. Dynon's customer service exceeded my expectations.
 
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