Dual STI build log

[Shadowrider]

Went out for a flight this Saturday. Had a friend send me his Lat and Long at his camping spot via satellite messenger saying there was a landing spot available. Mission was for me and my oldest son to fly out and survey the area and possibly land. The friend had a handheld walkie-talkie and would radio once I flew over. I checked where he was at and it was BLM land. I decided to fly out early Saturday morning. When I take off, I turn the garmin to the engine parameter page to monitor parameters, then switch to full screen view once on my way. About 20 min into the flight I happen to glance down and I have a "Volt" annunciator. That got my attention and I switch to the engine page and I see my volts are down to 13 volts. (13 volts is where I have my yellow annunciation set.) I do not have audio turned on for the yellow warning, but do for the red, so I am not sure how long it has been there? I feel like it has not been on long, but plan on checking my data log to see. So my first thought was my VR just went out. Seems early that I only have 150hrs and it has already gone out. So I reach under the panel to my hidden switches and switch off the breaker switch for the edge 35 amp alternator input, and switch on the breaker switch for the stock rotax alternator input which runs through the stock rotax VR. Battery volts immediately jump to 13.2 then are climbing up to 13.3...13.4.... Then I decide if I continue the flight or return home. Normal current load is around 18 amps. Knowing the stock rotax alternator is around 18 amps, or that's what I seem to remember, I decide to reduce the load and I will monitor battery and will continue on the flight. I figure its early in the morning and I won't need the heat for the trip back and I shut off the lights and heater. Amp load drops to 11 and the battery is charging fine.

We make it to find where my friend is camping, survey the area and decide to land on the road leading into his camp. There was some fields close that looked doable but had some dead sage brush that I didn't want to risk damage from the sage brush. Made a landing on the road, but it was much more challenging than I thought because it was a down hill pretty good slope. We stopped in and said Hi right as they where making breakfast. Perfect timing! We took off, did a pass over the camp and then decided to head onto the dunes to check out how many where out this weekend. Then we returned home. Unfortunately the winds aloft had picked up already. They where not forecast until later, but looks like the front had arrived early. It got pretty bumpy on the trip back crossing the mountains and my son Cade got sick. Never lost his breakfast but was not feeling good. I bought some chew-able air sick pills that I gave him a half of one and 30 min after landing he was feeling good again.


Well, long story short is when I landed I was bummed the VR went out because we have a lakebed camping trip planned for the next weekend. I decided to call Stol Creek Aviation in Kansas and Mike picked up. He looked in his Edge performance parts and found a extra VR that he said he can overnight me on Monday. So I decided to pull mine off and get ready to install the new one. I went to pull off my EDGE VR (ducati VR has a different part number than rotax) I found a cooked connector and cooked wires. The best I can tell is the connector that came with the VR and alternator, allowed the spade connectors inside to back out slightly, creating heat and cooking the wire and connector. Got hot enough that it melted the wire which disconnected the power feed to the VR. Glad nothing else was damaged. Should of gone with my gut when I was wiring that I didn't like how that connector had some play in it when I wired it. Decided to fix the wire on the VR, and install a better connector and hopefully it didn't damage the alternator or the VR. After wiring it up I started it up and the edge alternator and VR where both good. YEAH! Shut down and check the wire temp and the wire was cool also. We are now going to change out Corys connector.

For some interesting stats from the Data log. When I took off the battery volts where 13.5. 3 min into the flight battery volt where at 14.1 (Fully charged battery) 8 min into the flight battery volts had dropped to 13.9 and going down (input to VR just failed) Almost 10 min later battery volts are down to 13.0 volts and I get a battery VOLTS annunciation which trigger me to look at engine page on garmin to see volts are at 13.0. (normal page volts are not displayed) Looks like it took me 50 seconds to notice the VOLT message and turn on the rotax alernator, so I am guessing VOLTS was not up to long before I noticed it. I am still going back to my setup and will turn on the Audio alert to make sure I don't miss that annunciator.