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#31
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DA 42 accident
"Cary" wrote in message oups.com... The problem, as I understand it, was the battery was dead. According to the POH, the battery is used to start the engine and is used as a backup during flight for all the electronic gear (including the FADEC). Although the investigation is still ongoing and other answers may be forthcoming, when they operated the landing gear they exceded the power available from the alternators and the backup system (the battery) was not available so the FADEC (engine computers) stopped. One of the lessons here is that one should not fly an airplane that relies on electricity if you don't have a battery to run the electricity! Cary On Apr 23, 4:35 pm, wrote: Gig 601XL Builder wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote: Neil Gould wrote: A simple voltmeter with a "red line" should suffice, along with a caution; "Don't take off with the needle outside the green arc". Of course, that won't prevent someone from insisting on making a bad decision. I again agree but if you are going to have an sytem with FADEC it ought to have the authority to to clearly tell you that it is about to use its' authority to shut the engine off. From the description it sounds more like the FADEC didn't have the authority (or power) to do anything. More to the point, if all the power goes away, what happens to all the "settings" the FADEC controls? Do they go to zero, full, stay where they are? It appears that they go to zero, which is a damn unhandy failure mode. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply. Even if the battery worked fine, something that causes damage, even something as small as a bird strike can cause a short; dropping voltage, and shutting down the engines, plural. Wouldn't a relay that isolated the engine when the buss voltage dropped to zero have helped? Surely some prioritizing is in order. Al G |
#32
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DA 42 accident
Neil Gould wrote:
Recently, Friedrich Ostertag posted: Karl-Heinz Kuenzel wrote: Hi. Here in Germany we had an accident with a brand new DA 42 in Speyer (EDRY) on 3-4-07 during take off. It seems, that the battery was down and both engine were started with remote power. After take off when retracting the gear, the props feathered and both engines stopped. You can read about that accident in German (sorry) in www.pilotundflugzeug.de First hearing about that accident and the background, I could not believe it. I don't even know where to start. How can an aircraft, that depends on electrical power for the operation of it's engines, be airworthy without fully redundant electrical systems? While in this particular case the pilot might have noticed the problem, had he meticuously follow procedures and started the second engine at the plane's own power, it is quite easy to find failure modes that would go unnoticed inflight, yet cause double engine failure at the instant the gear is lowered on final. Lead batteries are known to occasionally go flat suddenly, once the buildup of oxide makes contact between the lead elements. Happened to me in the car once. The engine (a diesel with mechanical injection pump) ran happily without me even noticing the failure until I shut it down. When I turned the power back on again, not even the lights in the dashboard would light up, it was completely and utterly dead. I would never have thought that they cut corners like that at Diamond. I Hope this will not create a lot of mistrust in aerodiesels, as it is not a diesel issue. I guess you could call it a FADEC issue if you wanted, however it really is an issue of redundancy of essential systems, and easily solveable as such. I have a somewhat different take on this event. It appears to me that the pilot didn't sufficiently understand his aircraft or the implications of the symptoms he observed. Knowing that there was insufficient power to start the engines, that the engine & prop controls were dependent on electric power and that the landing gear used an electric motor would have stopped me from taking off until the battery/electrical system problem was addressed. Well said, and I wouldn't disagree. However, the very same potentially deadly failure could occur anytime the battery fails inflight, with no way for the pilot to know about it before he actually hits the button to lower the gear. That alone appears to me to be a major design flaw that would make me pretty uncomfortable, batteries are known to fail suddenly sometimes. I really would expect redundancy in something as critical as the power supply for the fadec to be a requirement for airworthyness. Why have two sets of magnetos on the typical SI-engine? It's just an electrical system, too... Why have a twin engined aircraft? I don't find it surprising that the props feathered in this situation, and would even say that it would be the expected behavior, rather than a fluke of some kind. If you are saying that a shut-down is to be expected when the power supply on a fadec controlled engine fails, you are right. No modern engine will continue running without electrical power. Even on a diesel with common rail fuel supply (as the thielert is) without electricity no fuel injection is possible. regards, Friedrich |
#33
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DA 42 accident
Karl-Heinz Kuenzel wrote:
I did not believe it either. Maybe I am getting to old. For me a diesel would run forever until you cut the fuel. not with a common rail fuel supply. The injectors won't open without power. The main point as far as I'm concerned is, that this is not a particular problem of the thielert or aerodiesels in general, it's a problem you get with engines depending on electrical power. This dependancy on electricity is somehow the price you pay for better fuel efficiency, more comfort and, as far as the engine itself is concerned, less "finger problems" and therefore more reliability. As the article itself states, it is not a big issue to create a redundant system that will eliminate the risk of a single point electrical failure shutting down an engine, let alone both. What those people did. They just started #1 and #2 (which was NOT ok) on external power. And everything looked ok. Until they retracted the landing gear.... I posted that story in our German newsgroup and nobody seemed to be interested in that issue. I was just curious, if someone here is interested. I'm not a pilot, though I enjoy flying in small aircraft and I have some technical interest in aviation. As a development engineer in automotive I particularly like to learn about aeroengines and I somewhat follow the development of the aerodiesels. I'm mainly lurking here... regards, Friedrich |
#34
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DA 42 accident
More to the point, if all the power goes away, what happens to all
the "settings" the FADEC controls? Do they go to zero, full, stay where they are? Without electrical power, apart from the fact that the FADEC is a computer, and no computer will run without power, on a common rail diesel the injectors cannot open. A purely mechanical "limp home" mode is physically not possible. Multipoint or direct injected gasoline engines are the same. It appears that they go to zero, which is a damn unhandy failure mode. Yes it is, but that's just the way it is. It's no different from the failure mode you get when your fuel supply or both magnetos fail or something similar. That's why the power supply of a FADEC should be held to similar stringent redundancy requirements. Actually, the FADEC itself IS double redundant but fed from just one battery. Go figure. regards, Friedrich |
#35
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DA 42 accident
On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:35:03 GMT, wrote:
It appears that they go to zero, which is a damn unhandy failure mode. It's the new, revolutionary fail unsafe mode. -- Dallas |
#36
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DA 42 accident
Friedrich Ostertag wrote:
Neil Gould wrote: Recently, Friedrich Ostertag posted: Karl-Heinz Kuenzel wrote: Hi. Here in Germany we had an accident with a brand new DA 42 in Speyer (EDRY) on 3-4-07 during take off. It seems, that the battery was down and both engine were started with remote power. After take off when retracting the gear, the props feathered and both engines stopped. You can read about that accident in German (sorry) in www.pilotundflugzeug.de First hearing about that accident and the background, I could not believe it. I don't even know where to start. How can an aircraft, that depends on electrical power for the operation of it's engines, be airworthy without fully redundant electrical systems? While in this particular case the pilot might have noticed the problem, had he meticuously follow procedures and started the second engine at the plane's own power, it is quite easy to find failure modes that would go unnoticed inflight, yet cause double engine failure at the instant the gear is lowered on final. Lead batteries are known to occasionally go flat suddenly, once the buildup of oxide makes contact between the lead elements. Happened to me in the car once. The engine (a diesel with mechanical injection pump) ran happily without me even noticing the failure until I shut it down. When I turned the power back on again, not even the lights in the dashboard would light up, it was completely and utterly dead. I would never have thought that they cut corners like that at Diamond. I Hope this will not create a lot of mistrust in aerodiesels, as it is not a diesel issue. I guess you could call it a FADEC issue if you wanted, however it really is an issue of redundancy of essential systems, and easily solveable as such. I have a somewhat different take on this event. It appears to me that the pilot didn't sufficiently understand his aircraft or the implications of the symptoms he observed. Knowing that there was insufficient power to start the engines, that the engine & prop controls were dependent on electric power and that the landing gear used an electric motor would have stopped me from taking off until the battery/electrical system problem was addressed. Well said, and I wouldn't disagree. However, the very same potentially deadly failure could occur anytime the battery fails inflight, with no way for the pilot to know about it before he actually hits the button to lower the gear. That alone appears to me to be a major design flaw that would make me pretty uncomfortable, batteries are known to fail suddenly sometimes. I really would expect redundancy in something as critical as the power supply for the fadec to be a requirement for airworthyness. Why have two sets of magnetos on the typical SI-engine? It's just an electrical system, too... Why have a twin engined aircraft? I don't find it surprising that the props feathered in this situation, and would even say that it would be the expected behavior, rather than a fluke of some kind. If you are saying that a shut-down is to be expected when the power supply on a fadec controlled engine fails, you are right. No modern engine will continue running without electrical power. Even on a diesel with common rail fuel supply (as the thielert is) without electricity no fuel injection is possible. regards, Friedrich This is a cut and paste from a AOPA story on the plane There are three batteries. The main battery is a 24-volt 10-amp-hour size. Electrical power is provided by two 24-volt 60-amp alternators — one on each engine. There also is a 24-volt 1.3-amp-hour alternator-excitation battery to provide alternator start-up (excitation) voltage if the main battery is discharged below the required excitation threshold. The third battery is a stand-alone emergency battery that powers the electric artificial horizon and an instrument floodlight for one and a half hours. The question then become if there are 2 60AMP alternators and a single 10AMP-hour battery how could the battery being dead cause the issue. I think there is much more here then meets the eye. Perhaps we should wait for more data before we jump to conclusions. |
#37
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DA 42 accident
"Newps" wrote in message . .. : : : Thomas Borchert wrote: : : Blueskies, : : : Doesn't the 1.7 have a throw away TBO-like limitation that is very low? : : : : No. it has a TBR (r for replacement) of 2400 hours, guaranteed by : Thielert. When you buy the engine, that price buys you 2400 hours. Can : you say that of any Lycosaurus or TCM? : : yes, they currently do replace the engines sooner than that - but you : don't pay for it. They're working up to final TBR. : : : What does it cost the owner at 2400 hours? A new engine... |
#38
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DA 42 accident
On 2007-04-22 04:23:22 -0700, Karl-Heinz Kuenzel
said: Hi. Here in Germany we had an accident with a brand new DA 42 in Speyer (EDRY) on 3-4-07 during take off. It seems, that the battery was down and both engine were started with remote power. After take off when retracting the gear, the props feathered and both engines stopped. You can read about that accident in German (sorry) in www.pilotundflugzeug.de First hearing about that accident and the background, I could not believe it. Karl If you have to start both engines with remote power it seems to me that is should be obvious that the electrical system is not working. If it doesn't work with one engine running it is not going to work with them both running. According to the article, the battery was so dead that it could not excite the alternator -- the alternator needs some current in order to start. For example, if you hand-prop a single engine piston airplane that has a dead battery, you might get the engine to run but you still will not have an electrical system. The article complains about there being a "single point of failure" for the plane, but in fact most small aircraft have the same single point of failure. In the case of the DA-42, however, electrical current is needed to keep the engines running. This is a big difference from the piston engines most of us are used to. This turns an electrical failure from a nuisance to something deadly. The excitation battery system is needed to run the ECU for each engine. Although each engine has its own bus, both are dependent on the excitation battery system. If that fails, both engine buses and the main bus go down. Since the excitation battery system does not have anywhere near the power to handle loads like the gear, the avionics, and the engine (and it was already broken), there was no way this plane was going to fly. The pilot should have known that if both engines needed to be started remotely that this plane was not airworthy. Spending a little time studying the electrical system of your plane can save your life. Look at each component and ask yourself, what if it quits? The props on most twin engine aircraft feather when they quit. It helps prevent loss of control in an engine failure. Only piston single engine props do the opposite in an attempt to keep the prop and engine turning to make it easier to restart -- but at the cost of greatly reducing your glide distance. Having a prop go to max rpm if it quits on a light twin is likely to be deadly. In general, it looks like a maintenance problem that was allowed to turn into an emergency, which in turn was badly mishandled. One very popular way of falling out of the sky is to take off in an airplane that you knew had problems before you left. All of that said, I think the article makes a strong argument that this kind of thing should not happen. If you are going to have engines dependent on electricity to keep running, then you need to have some form of backup, but the DA-41 has a backup system -- it just didn't cover what would happen if the alternator failed on takeoff and someone raised the gear. I don't like the idea of the engines shutting down in an electrical failure, either, but that is one price of FADEC. In the DA-42, it appears that installing a generator was considered to be enough redundancy in the event of an alternator failure. It apparently never occurred to anyone that someone would take off with a failed alternator and then try to raise the gear. The question is why raising the landing gear should be allowed to cause a complete system failure. The easiest fix would be to install a bigger generator, but that is probably not a complete solution. I agree that the electrical system should prioritize things, too. And if things fail, I don't want just a red line on the voltmeter -- I want it to be something that attracts attention to itself. In the DA-42, it appears that there is an alternator failure light. This thing should have been lit. Perhaps the pilot ignored it. Presumably the generator would keep things running once the engine starts, but if all you have is the generator I don't think you have any business departing the field. In this case, the alternator appears to have never even started running because of the failure of the excitation system, and the generator was too weak to run the whole system, so it quit completely. Dang. Yeah, I think there is a design problem, but it seems to me that the pilot missed plenty of warning signs and opportunities to do something about them. -- Waddling Eagle World Famous Flight Instructor |
#39
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DA 42 accident
On 2007-04-24 14:47:11 -0700, "Friedrich Ostertag"
said: Neil Gould wrote: Recently, Friedrich Ostertag posted: Karl-Heinz Kuenzel wrote: Hi. Here in Germany we had an accident with a brand new DA 42 in Speyer (EDRY) on 3-4-07 during take off. It seems, that the battery was down and both engine were started with remote power. After take off when retracting the gear, the props feathered and both engines stopped. You can read about that accident in German (sorry) in www.pilotundflugzeug.de First hearing about that accident and the background, I could not believe it. I don't even know where to start. How can an aircraft, that depends on electrical power for the operation of it's engines, be airworthy without fully redundant electrical systems? While in this particular case the pilot might have noticed the problem, had he meticuously follow procedures and started the second engine at the plane's own power, it is quite easy to find failure modes that would go unnoticed inflight, yet cause double engine failure at the instant the gear is lowered on final. Lead batteries are known to occasionally go flat suddenly, once the buildup of oxide makes contact between the lead elements. Happened to me in the car once. The engine (a diesel with mechanical injection pump) ran happily without me even noticing the failure until I shut it down. When I turned the power back on again, not even the lights in the dashboard would light up, it was completely and utterly dead. I would never have thought that they cut corners like that at Diamond. I Hope this will not create a lot of mistrust in aerodiesels, as it is not a diesel issue. I guess you could call it a FADEC issue if you wanted, however it really is an issue of redundancy of essential systems, and easily solveable as such. I have a somewhat different take on this event. It appears to me that the pilot didn't sufficiently understand his aircraft or the implications of the symptoms he observed. Knowing that there was insufficient power to start the engines, that the engine & prop controls were dependent on electric power and that the landing gear used an electric motor would have stopped me from taking off until the battery/electrical system problem was addressed. Well said, and I wouldn't disagree. However, the very same potentially deadly failure could occur anytime the battery fails inflight, with no way for the pilot to know about it before he actually hits the button to lower the gear. No. This was not caused by a battery failure per se. It was a failure of the electrical excitation system which starts the alternators. That should prevent the engine from starting and it did. However, the pilot bypassed that by starting both engines (a big no-no) with external power. The battery is not actually used in-flight to keep the engines running. The alternators are used for that, with a generator backup, and finally a battery for backup, with warning lights all over the place. Once the plane is flying, assuming the alternators start out working, you would practically have to have a major electrical fire to duplicate the problem. But take off without a working alternator and you have a big problem. -- Waddling Eagle World Famous Flight Instructor |
#40
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DA 42 accident
On 2007-04-24 09:09:14 -0700, Cary said:
The problem, as I understand it, was the battery was dead. According to the POH, the battery is used to start the engine and is used as a backup during flight for all the electronic gear (including the FADEC). Although the investigation is still ongoing and other answers may be forthcoming, when they operated the landing gear they exceded the power available from the alternators and the backup system (the battery) was not available so the FADEC (engine computers) stopped. One of the lessons here is that one should not fly an airplane that relies on electricity if you don't have a battery to run the electricity! Actually, if the battery is dead the alternators will never start working. This is the excitation battery system that failed. Its sole purpose is to supply enough current to excite the alternator when the engine is started. After that it is never used again during the flight. The DA-42 has considerable redundancy. Click on the electrical diagram in the article and you can see the problem immediately. This particular airplane has two alternators *and* a generator. If the alternators do not work (as is probable) then the generator kicks in. The generator, however, is not big enough to operate both landing gear and engine -- a possible design flaw. Also, if you are going to have a generator, why not use it to excite the alternators if the excitation system has failed? Apparently the designers assumed that if the generator is being used that the alternators have failed beyond repair, but here it might have been possible to get the alternators working with a full complement of power. On the other hand, maybe the original problem was the alternators were both dead (doesn't seem likely) and that is why the excitation system was dead. So even current from the generator would not have excited the alternators. -- Waddling Eagle World Famous Flight Instructor |
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