Recurring Remote Compass issue

[PhantomPholly]

Ok, I'm a bit frustrated.  Flying for over a year with a D-180; early on had persistent problems with "Remote Compass Not Found" error, finally re-pinned both connectors and "squeezed" the female pins, thought I had it licked.

Coming home from Oshkosh this week got the error again 30 miles from home; this time, even re-booting the EFIS did not correct it.



If it is connection-related, I want to hard wire the dag-danged thing.  I haven't started using it IFR, and won't until this is resolved for good.  I am fully un-interested in experiencing this error on final in the soup.

Is there any special consideration (other than aggravation if I have to replace it later) I should consider if I pull the units (EDC-D10A and EFIS) and hard-wire those connectors?

 

[PhantomPholly]

Bump for the crew coming home from Oshkosh...

 

[jakej]

(finally re-pinned both connectors and "squeezed" the female pins, thought I had it licked.)

PP

That's what I'd be checking again - I recently found a bad Dsub connector, it wasn't allowing the sockets to 'click' home so it was free to move out when mating to the radio - after 7 years this is the first time it ever happened.

You shouldn't have to hard wire it. I'd Replace the mil spec sockets & check that they are locked in.

Jake J

 

[PhantomPholly]

Thanks Jake - I'll give that a try.

 

[PhantomPholly]

On second thought, it is so hard to get back to the tail cone of my little Lancair that I think I will after all hard-wire the remote compass end of the wires. It's just not worth having to do 2-3 more times...

 

[jakej]

PP

Your call let us know how it works out.

Jake J

 

[DBRV10]

I had intermittent faults one day.....then it stopped working altogether. Swapped connectors around with other known good one problem followed the compass head.

Was a dead magnetometer. Installed new one and all good.

 

[jakej]

The purrfect 10

 

[PhantomPholly]

Update:  Over the weekend I crawled back into the tailcone to get at my EDC10A.  Grrr.  After removing it and opening the covers, I discovered that even hard-wiring is probably not an option - hard pins extend directly from the circuit board, take 90 degree turns and enter the plug.  

Unthreaded the cable up the tunnel so I could at least sit in the seat while working, and one at a time pulled each of the female pins from the DB9 connector.  Using a large vise grip, gently squeeze-click, try sliding the female onto a pin, if still not tight tighten vise grip 1/8 turn and repeat.  Once I found the sweet amount of crimp, repeated this for all 4 pins at the EDC10A connector.

Put everything back, connector now very snug.  2hrs flying, no error - YET...

Suggestion for Dynon:  For nextgen, build in BlueTooth for all components.  I have to believe that it is more reliable than these connectors.  Then test with avionics to insure that BlueTooth doesn't generate EMI.

 

[jakej]

Thanks for the reply - knew it had to be a simple solution although hard to get to in your case.

For others who are reading this - please use good a quality barrel crimp tool, it could save you a whole lot of frustration

Jake J

 

[PhantomPholly]

Jake,

It wasn't a matter of the tool. The crimp-to-connector was fine in every case, and I had already switched out between the cheap foldover type pins to the type for which you need a special crimping tool.

The issue (if this actually solved it) appears to be that even the high quality barrel pins do not snugly contact the pins once the connectors are fastened. I find that to be rather unacceptable - good old Molex connectors would not have this issue, as the pins are very snug.

At this point it is too soon to call it fixed. In another year flying in turbulence with no failures, I'll probably relax about it...

 

[Brantel]

Are you sure you are using the correct barrels for the pins and vise versa??? There are different sizes of these things and it is not easy to see it visually. I think the color code is the best way to tell..

Millions of these connections are all over airliners and most if not all of the general aviation fleet...

It may be possible that you were using a barrel that was made for a bigger pin???  Or the barrel or pin was out of tolerance?

 

[PhantomPholly]

I am only aware of two sizes, and Stein sells both (and no others) on his site.  One size is for traditional D-Sub; a smaller size is used on my Garmin GNS 480 (and which my Avionics guy tells me is peculiar to Garmin).  I tried the smaller ones just to make sure - they won't fit on the male pins and fall out of the D-Sub connector hole.

That doesn't mean there isn't a third size in the middle that I am ignorant of; however, I'm pretty sure Dynon uses the "standard" size.