What's the latest, Commander-heads?

[Adam Frisch]

What's the story?

Been awhile since I checked in. Aerostar is still in Alabama at Don's. I put it on the market, but nobody appreciates the beauty of the Superstar II's, so might just be I keep her a bit longer. Asked Don to wrap annual up asap so I can get her back to CA and start flying a bit. Been a lot of non-op years in general. Dreaming of bucket list, getting her to Europe for our summer visit.  Be so much fun to get her over there, but not sure I could do it - takes money, insurance and a bit of currency to attempt such a trip. Plus they need 8.33Mhz radios, of which I have none...

[donv]

Glad to hear from you, Adam!

Europe is just crazy expensive. I've done it in long range business jets, and the costs are just crazy.

I've just about given up on this place, unfortunately. Facebook isn't really a decent substitute either, but it is hard to get anyone else to post here.

Superstar II is a neat airplane, but as I recall, expensive engines? Mine was a 602P with the upgraded engines, and that worked really well. Not as nice as the 980, though!

I was parked in front of a beautiful 900 in Bermuda Dunes the other day. I would have taken a picture, but I didn't have time-- everyone wanted to get on the road.

[JMA]

Always time for a quick phone camera picture DonV!  Sadly this site has gone quiet as of late.  Miss the stories.

[donv]

Not when my wife is glaring at me, wondering why I'm talking to some stranger while she is waiting to leave!

[SKYFLYER]

ahhh yes "HAPPY WIFE... HAPPY LIFE" I AM FIRM BELIVER

[JMA]

Valid. 

[schrambow]

Yes, very quiet in here the last half a year for sure.
We have had some issues with our 3100 Autopilot we are trying to troubleshoot.
This might be the wrong area to post, but what the heck.
We will get about 40 minutes of working autopilot in the beginning of the flight, and it will just disconnect and say Auto Failure.  It then clears and we can use the flight director portion and manual fly the bird.  Whenever i try and hit the autopilot button, it tries to engine the servos but then without 1 second it disconnects and gives the same message.
I have taken it to the shop and of course the autopilot works perfectly fine both down and back from the shop (1 hour flight each way) We have changed out the AHRS box and it acts the same way, so it can't be that. I need it to fail down at the shop in order for them to properly troubleshoot, maybe i can set it up on an APU for an hour or two with the autopilot engaged and hopefully it will fail and they can then figure out what is causing this failure.
It's been working decent for about 2 years since we put it in though, and just started to act up in the last month or so.  Got about 15 hours in the last month hand flying it, so getting used of the old days of hand flying commanders when those Bendix M4B autopilots would fail all the time - actually very easy to hand fly commanders and is an non issue for me, and I do find it less boring, but it's harder to eat a sandwich when hand flying.
Just thought i would share with the group as it is pretty slow on here lately, and to see if anyone else knows about the 3100 as they are in many commanders now. 
thanks
corey

[donv]

One thing which will cause that "FAIL" message is if you lose GPS... but I imagine you would be aware of losing GPS, since it affects all sorts of other things as well.

I had a bad GPS antenna, which would trigger random GPS failures (sometimes dual GPS failures).

I think I've seen the FAIL maybe one other time.

[donv]

Now that IS&S owns the 3100, I'm not sure what the future holds. Hopefully they are keeping the team in Mineral Wells.

[Adam Frisch]

Sad to hear it's gone so quiet, Don. I have peeked in a few times, and I've noticed the same.

Not sure why, but it just seems like there are fewer Commanders around in general. The whole piston crowd seemed to have disbursed and kind of never made it over here to begin with. And the Turbine side seems very transitory - feels like owning one it's just a short stop on the way to jets. And the voices within the community also has silenced a lot. Maybe the factory getting sold also had something to do with it?

Anyway, I hope it comes back!

[schrambow]

My 3100 Autopilot;
This past weekend, i fired up my electic APU and ran the autopilot for well over 90 minutes on the ground without any failure.  I know there isn't any wind/force resistance on the plane sitting on the ground.  I was making it descend, ascend, hold altitude, I tried pretty much everything i could think of; even tried grabbing and putting force against it with my arms, etc.. The unit just wouldn't create the failure like it did on my last few trips.  I know if I attempt take down to the avionics shop (less than 60 minutes) this unit will not fail as it knows it is going the avionics shop.   I guess we still might do that and just start trying to replace parts with loner parts to see if it fixes the failure issue. Either that, or i could try and pretend to file a flight plan and pretend to travel somewhere else, and then when it fails, we take a quick detour to the avionics shop?

Just thought i would share this morning.

[donv]

Have you talked with Barry Lane about your 3100 issues? He has a direct line to the guys who designed it.

[Bruce Byerly]

We are busy flying Adam!  I tried the Aerostar thing but I needed to go 1000 miles to find someone to competently change the oil let alone maintain the plane.  You should get yourself a Shrike or take your plane to the flight shop?

Sorry I haven’t been too active here lately as I sometimes struggle to login for some reason (says site not secure?) but we have had better engagement from Twin Commander than we have in some years including a meeting in Peoria and also one in Smyrna.

Corey - sorry to hear it’s giving you grief.  Sounds like a computer problem.  I wonder what IS&S can do on an exchange basis?