"Jay Honeck" writes:

I've never seen a vacuum failure, in over 800 hours of flying. (Although I
did experience a vacuum attitude indicator failure a couple of months
ago...)

I experienced my first vacuum failure about 100 hours after I bought
my Warrior. I was about 10 miles back at night in excellent VMC. I
reduced power to start a gentle descent, and immediately the vacuum
indicator lit up (it was impossible to miss). I crosschecked the
suction gauge, which read 0. By the time we touched down, the AI was
seriously tilted and the HI was barely moving.

My plane was imported to Canada in 1988 and got a new set of logs then
(as is typical). I have found no reference to a vacuum pump
replacement in the logs, so the pump that failed had at least 1,000
hours and 15 years on it.


All the best,


David