Had a Garmin G500 display go black mid-flight last Tuesday over Phoenix

Turns out a loose ground wire on the backplane was the culprit, and I spent 45 minutes tracing it with a multimeter before I found the bad crimp - has anyone else run into intermittent power issues on these older glass panels?

2 comments

2 Comments

rileygonzalez23d ago

Did a buddy of mine have that exact same loose ground issue on a G5 in his Mooney last fall?

wendy_murphy1623d ago

I actually read something from Mike Busch about this a few months ago where he talked about G5 ground issues being pretty common on Mooneys because of how the firewall grounds are set up. Something about the rivets vibrating loose over time, especially on the M20 models from the late 90s. A guy on the MooneySpace forum said he had to re-crimp his ground lug three times before it finally stayed tight. Might be worth checking the specific screw size too because some of those older airframes use a weird SAE thread that doesn't match the G5's supplied hardware.