C'est La Vie . . . I guess
Thursday, March 14, 2013 at 09:19PM Had it all planned. Fly to Orlando Wednesday, flight school today, Friday, and Saturday, fly to Sarasota Sunday, have GPS units upgraded Monday and Tuesday, fly back to Savannah Wednesday.
Spent some time this morning in the classroom, went to lunch, and got out to the airport to fly around 1:30 pm. Turned on the power and the magic “glass cockpit” multi-function display (MFD) would not start up. Gave us strange messages, and it would never come on correctly.
Taxied over to an avionics shop. Avidyne (the manufacturer) says the software is “corrupted”. They will send new software but it will not be here until Monday. Flight school is cancelled to be rescheduled. GPS upgrade is cancelled to be rescheduled. Can’t fly anywhere near Savannah from Orlando commercial without going through Atlanta or Charlotte and spending $600 to $800 and five or six hours. Driving a rental car four hours to Savannah tomorrow. Leaving the plane here to get fixed. Will probably be three to four weeks before my schedule will allow me to set this up again.
Even if the new software works, there may be some hardware problem that “corrupted” the software, so this first step may not really solve the problem for long.
Only good news, the previous owners had some kind of extended warranty on the Avidyne that runs to 2016, and transferred to me when I bought the plane. Priceless.
I won’t be writing about flying for three or four weeks, but I’ll be back.
Reader Comments (2)
Rather you found the problem on the ground, than it happened in the air in heavy IFR. As they say, "If you have time to spare...
You're right about that. Whatever fails on the ground is OK by me, especially if it is in warranty!