[TenTec] Airplane "reboots"

[Richard Williams]

The airplane I flew had two hundred and some odd computers (+ or - a 
couple).   It is not uncommon for one or two to "act up".  And yes, 
sometimes shutting the whole airplane down and powering back up would fix a 
problem.  Sitting at the gate, it was sometimes easier to do that than try 
to figure out what computer needed to be re-booted.   On occassion, however, 
you would fix one problem by doing this, only to have another pop up from 
the re-boot.   Most of the time I would only shut everythng down and power 
back up as a last resort thing.

Obviously, powering down the airplane in flight would not be a smart idea; 
the number of options for fixing a problem is severely reduced.  Once in 
flight, there is a very limited number of  circuit breakers or switches you 
can recycle without reverting to use of "capts emergency authority".

By the way, there are eight flight control computers.  Personally, I never 
had a probem with any of them during flight; but on a few occassions I had 
one fail taxing out; and we would just re-boot it.  There were eight swithes 
in the cockpit that would turn them on or off.

I think the most common problem was the "mltifunction control display unit" 
(we call it the "MUC-DO" for short).   There is one for each pilot and that 
is the way we communicated with the navigation system.   A very common 
problem was for one to "lock up" (just like your computer at home) and not 
be able to input data.   The fix was to re-cycle the CB for the effected 
unit (it was the only way to fix it and it was an approved procedure).

Don't know if you know it, but besides the standard cockpit voice recorder 
and flt data recorder,  there is also a maintenance computer which keeps 
track of everything going on with the aircraft systems.   Maintenance can 
look back and see exactly what was going on, what failed and when.

Dick  K8ZTT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dr. Gerald N. Johnson" <geraldj at storm.weather.net>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 7:37 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Problem: Please confirm Orion II Radios


> On Tue, 2006-04-04 at 09:21 -0500, Grant Youngman wrote:
>> > Did you have to turn the airplane off and then back on in
>> > mid-flight like we have to sometimes?:)
>>
>> Midflight would be a bummer.
>>
>> Sitting on the tarmac, though, a pilot "rebooted" an aircraft to try and
>> clear a malfunctioning engine indicator of some kind.  Would make me a 
>> bit
>> nervous to think an airplane might be running on Windows XP :-)
>
> More likely Windoze CE if one would believe the Microsoft one page flier
> I received yesterday proposing it for embedded systems.
>>
>> Grant/NQ5T
>
> -- 
> 73, Jerry, K0CQ,
> All content copyright Dr. Gerald N. Johnson, electrical engineer
>
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