Month: February 2025

I flew two long cross-country flights (and lots of shorter ones):

Richmond (KFCI) to Chicago, IL (KPWK)

Richmond (KFCI) to Hopkinsville, KY (KHVC).

Had a fantastic tailwind on the return flight from KY:

I got my CFI rating using my RV-14A for my check ride.

I got my CFII rating using my RV-14A for my check ride.

This probably isn’t the easiest way to accomplish those goals because some DPEs don’t want to fly in airplanes they are not familiar with. Luckily, I convinced two different DPEs to fly with me. Of the two, I would say that the CFII was the one I was most worried about (many people say the opposite). I think there are so many ways to bust the CFII check ride (get low, off course, bad radio work, etc. etc.). Somehow, I didn’t do any of those three but I did nearly fail because I didn’t know that I still needed to carry my commercial license with me when I have my CFI license. It actually says that right on the back of the CFI license, but I was blissfully unaware. The DPE actually let me call home and have my wife send him a copy of my commercial license (which was sitting in my top desk drawer).

I fixed a couple small things recently. The red LED cockpit lights used to occasionally blink. I didn’t use them often so I just ignored the issue. I recently tracked the issue to a loose connection in the switch/dimmer. It only took a few moments with a tiny screwdriver and the issue was gone.

I had an intermittent issue with the oil pressure sensor. Very occasionally, I would get the dreaded red x on the G3X MFD for oil pressure. I knew that it wasn’t really an oil pressure problem (no CHT issues, engine ran fine). Annoying as heck though. My first thought was it was a bad wire from the sensor to the Garmin GEA 24. I checked the wire multiple times but couldn’t find the issue. Turns out that I had an earlier version of the pressure transducer that had known reliability issues. Thanks to my friend (Jon) that happened to know that little tidbit of information. $300 and fifteen minutes of labor and I had the improved version 2 of the sensor installed and my problem is gone. 🙂

The last one is a bit more complex. I noticed that my Garmin autopilot in HDG mode would overshoot a turn to the right. For example, if I was on a heading of 180 and I commanded a turn to 270, it would go to 280 and then work it’s way back to 270. The auto roll trim would be pegged to the right too. I thought it was an issue with the roll servo or the Ray Allen trim servo. Turns out it was a setting in the G3X was backward. When the autopilot was calling for right roll trim, it was actually adding left roll trim. This would cause the autopilot to ask for even more trim. This would continue until it had commanded all the trim that was available. A talk with the guys at Steinair solved the problem. They had seen this type of issue before and had me make a single change in the configuration and the problem is completely gone.

BTW, I love the G3X system. Garmin has packed a huge amount of capability into the system and they continue to provide substantial updates to it.