FasGlas
Well Known Member
Well, after talking up Vertical Power all these years and never having a failure... I had a failure.. The flaps quit working. After flying with some friends for some breakfast I hopped in to fly home and No Flaps... Nothing, just an error message on the EFIS.. Needless to say I got them back up and flew home.
I contacted Astronics, they wanted $600 to fix it.. Figured I'd open it up and see what there is to see. It's a very nice clean design except for one problem. Very thin solder on surface mount components to be used in an airplane. After resoldering the loose parts back onto the board and doing a last look around I reinstalled it and it's back working as it should.
I hate to say but I've defended my VP-X to all comers for many years. Now I can see if this fails, and I guess they do, the plane can be very grounded. On the other hand, when it works it's a great piece of equipment.
I don't mind eating a serving of crow when it's my turn to dine. All is working now and I would not remove my VP-X over this... But for those that hesitate installing these since the VP-X are "all the eggs in the basket" for power distribution I understand. My advice for anyone installing any ECB's is to have enough knowledge to do work arounds in the event you have to.
I contacted Astronics, they wanted $600 to fix it.. Figured I'd open it up and see what there is to see. It's a very nice clean design except for one problem. Very thin solder on surface mount components to be used in an airplane. After resoldering the loose parts back onto the board and doing a last look around I reinstalled it and it's back working as it should.
I hate to say but I've defended my VP-X to all comers for many years. Now I can see if this fails, and I guess they do, the plane can be very grounded. On the other hand, when it works it's a great piece of equipment.
I don't mind eating a serving of crow when it's my turn to dine. All is working now and I would not remove my VP-X over this... But for those that hesitate installing these since the VP-X are "all the eggs in the basket" for power distribution I understand. My advice for anyone installing any ECB's is to have enough knowledge to do work arounds in the event you have to.