Just realized how many old 28V systems are still flying around after reading a fleet survey in Aviation Week

I was reading a fleet survey in Aviation Week that said over 15% of the regional turboprops we still service daily are running on the original 28V DC architecture, which seems wild when you think about all the modern avionics we're trying to integrate.

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota_rivera6d ago

My uncle's Cessna still has the original wiring lol

david8216d ago

That 15% number from Aviation Week is actually low for some shops I've talked to. The real headache is trying to put modern glass displays on those old 28V buses without a rock solid voltage regulator. We had to add a separate avionics bus with its own solid state regulator on a King Air last month just to stop the screens from flickering. The original generators just can't handle the clean power new boxes need. It's a whole project just to get stable voltage before you even start the install.