I have a DA 50 with a smart fly cutoff. While flying today I went dead stick . After landing without incident I noticed the ignition light was off. I recycled everything and and everything seemed normal so I flew again with plenty of altitude. Same thing happened again after about 8 minutes. I landed without incident but once again the ignition light was off. I don't want to push my luck again. I recycled everything again and shook all the ignition , battery and cut off connections on the ground but the light remained on. Does anyone have any ideas. Is it possible something in the ignition could be shorting out power supply? Nothing worse than intermittent electrical problems. All my connections are Deans and all connections are clean and solid. Thanks

You need to start isolating things to determine where the issue is....start with the easy stuff....try a different battery....then a switch....or remove the smartfly and connect the battery directly to the ignition and see if you still have the issue. Is it the Smartfly with the fibre optic connection? I've seen both the receiver end and the ignition end fail but usually not both at the same time. I've also had good "name brand" batteries intermittantly fail when a balancing board solder tab came loose under vibration so dont assume that something is good under bench test conditions. The connection would only come loose when I throttled up....I never would have found it just testing with a meter. Good luck!


CB

Thanks for the info. I have an extra battery, switch and cut off I think I'll just replace the whole system. This plane has about 250 flights on it. My wife and I were walking past the plane and I patted the cowel while walking by and she said it reminds her of the love pats I give her.

Originally Posted by jbuydos

I have a DA 50 with a smart fly cutoff. While flying today I went dead stick . After landing without incident I noticed the ignition light was off. I recycled everything and and everything seemed normal so I flew again with plenty of altitude. Same thing happened again after about 8 minutes. I landed without incident but once again the ignition light was off. I don't want to push my luck again. I recycled everything again and shook all the ignition , battery and cut off connections on the ground but the light remained on. Does anyone have any ideas. Is it possible something in the ignition could be shorting out power supply? Nothing worse than intermittent electrical problems. All my connections are Deans and all connections are clean and solid. Thanks

Double check to ensure the that the engine cut off switch, on the TX, has 100% ATV programmed on it.

The fact it took a while to quit makes me suspicious of the battery.

Check the Anderson PowerPole connector that comes stock on the DA ignitions (the black and red plastic connector) I have seen MANY of these fail due to not having enough strain relief on the wires entering and exiting the connector. I have seen ignitions that seem to just, "die" all of a sudden, or exhibit intermittent issues like you seem to be having.


I like the PowerPole connectors, but I now fill them with some kind of silicone in order to provide some strain and vibration relief.


Regards,


Astro

If the light was off then you can forget about the connector coming from the Smart-Fly unit to the ignition itself. It is failing somewhere before that connector.

With the ignition on wiggle the connections, including the black receptacle for the optical cable, on the ignition side of the Smart-Fly and watch the LED. I've had two of these fail.

I have seen smart fly cutoffs do that before. New one took care of it.

I replaced the Smart Fly with an excel opti kill switch. Hopefully I will get a chance to fly tomorrow. I also checked every connection and they appeared to be OK. If I was thinking when it dead sticked a second time I would have left everything the way it was and used a test light to see if I could trace the issue. Hindsight is always 20/20. It is a great hobby. Thanks. Go. Cards and Rams

Jack

I got the chance to fly my plane today with the new kill switch and everything went well. Thanks for the help.

I recently had an intermittent problem with a SF Optical Kill and thanks to good advice by Bob Ritchey the owner of SF I checked and double checked all of my connections and connectors. I finally isolated the problem to one of the Deans connectors while it was plugged into a battery checker / voltmeter. When I wiggled the Deans connectors the voltage would disappear then reappear.

When I carefully removed the shrink wrap from the Deans connector I found that one of the wires had broken right behind where the tinned solder reached. It was still under the shrink wrap but cutting in and out.

I also had a buddy recently have two dead sticks during an IMAC contest. A wire had broken in one of the Power Pole connectors (previously mentioned above).

What I am saying is don't assume it is the SF Optical Kill unless you have really checked all the connectors and solder joints.

Hate to be the devil's advocate, but have you ever considered a Tech Aero IBEC?

I think the point is that issues with any of the popular opti switches are more unusual than issues with connections/wires leading to them.

I will go through all connections. I would like to get another 200 flights on it. Thanks

I have a SF kill system where the LED is intermittent and I can't find the source of the problem... I emailed SF but never received a reply... The kill works... but the light either blinks rapidly or is out... but the engine runs fine and the kill works... Sure wish I could figure out the problem...