Roost Air Lounge => Aviation related topics => Topic started by: Daniel Lindberg on June 23, 2016, 12:27:21 AM
Title: Loss of alternator at 6500 ft in the dark
Post by: Daniel Lindberg on June 23, 2016, 12:27:21 AM
::sweat:: My wife and I were enroute from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN on December 7, 2015. We were enroute to our home base at 08D (Stanley ND) It was a beautiful night to make the 3-4 hour flight home. Normally I fly alone in the dark, but is was such a nice night, my wife and I decided to make the journey home. We were at 6500 ft and cruising at about 130 kts. All of a sudden my voltage light blinked once, my Garmin 430 blinked once, then my fuel gauges dropped to empty. Within 15 seconds all electric items were dead. We had no lights, no GPS, nothing. Fortunately I had a backup WiFi system in my plane and my ipad on my lap. This allowed us to find an airport and give me the needed info to safely land at a small airport that had their runway lights on as I could not activate the lights from my plane. Very scary, very dark, and things happened very quickly. I also have electric landing gear which was obsolete, so I tried twice to manually crank the gear down, thought it was down, it was not. We are still waiting for our plane after the gear up landing. But thanks to my backup WiFi system and ipad, we survived and lived to fly again soon. I share this story to save lives, but also would recommend www.aviationessentials.net for the backup systems, they offer new and used items like the one that virtually saved our lives that night. I will continue to fly at night, however it's going take alot to get my wife back up in the dark. N292LG
Title: Re: Loss of alternator at 6500 ft in the dark
Post by: G-man on June 23, 2016, 08:01:58 AM
Glad you made it, but I suspect your battery may need to be changed....it should have lasted at least 20 minutes at night with non-essential stuff turned on....
Title: Re: Loss of alternator at 6500 ft in the dark
Post by: Baradium on August 28, 2016, 05:47:37 AM
This reads like an advertisement for me. I was a bit confused about how the wifi works with the aircraft battery dead, but I'm guessing that had its own battery backup. I think I'd rather have a backup battery for the radios.
