Had a Garmin G1000 go dark on me during a preflight check yesterday

I was doing a routine preflight on a Cessna 172 at our hangar in Nashville when the PFD just flickered and went black. Pulled the breakers, reset everything, still nothing. Turned out a cold solder joint on the backplane finally gave up after 12 years of service. Took me 4 hours with a multimeter and a magnifying lamp to find it. Has anyone else dealt with intermittent failures on older glass panels like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

jesseb202d ago

Didn't I read something about Garmin having a batch of bad backplanes back then?

wrenstone2d ago

Dang, that's the kind of gremlin that'll drive you nuts for days.

hunt.rowan2d ago

Actually push back on that a bit. Those intermittent bugs are half the fun of troubleshooting, gives you something to really sink your teeth into. I had a 780 that would only crash when the temperature outside dropped below 50 and only on Tuesdays. Spent a whole winter tracking that one down, turned out to be a loose solder joint that expanded just enough when the room got chilly. Wouldve traded that kind of puzzle for a boring dead capacitor any day. Keeps your diagnostic skills sharp and your swear word vocabulary colorful.