Can we talk about how everyone seems to think you can just ignore the manual for the Garmin G5000?

I've seen three different techs at my hangar skip the full power-on self-test sequence because 'it takes too long', but that's how you miss a fault code that only shows up in the first 90 seconds, and I had to prove it with a printout from a plane that came back with a repeat squawk.

3 comments

3 Comments

caleb_stone1mo ago

Saw a similar thing with the "full power-on self-test" on a King Air's avionics last month.

perez.patricia1mo ago

What if the test itself is causing wear on the components it's checking? Like, running that full diagnostic cycle over and over might be the thing that leads to the next fault. Seen it happen with older modules where the fix was to stop testing so much.

uma6851mo ago

Ngl, that "what if the test is causing wear" thing hit a little too close to home. I'm the guy who once spent 45 minutes trying to fix a fault that turned out to be just me running the self-test so many times I wore out the connector pins. Now I'm sitting there with my printout proving the first 90 seconds catch the fault, while the module is literally smoking from me running it again. So yeah, maybe there's a middle ground between "skip the test entirely" and "test it until it breaks on the bench." But honestly, I'm still gonna run that full sequence. I'd rather wear out a module proving it works than explain to a customer why their plane had a squawk I missed.