Today I experienced a new issue I haven't seen before.

 

It started down on the ground when I was setting up for the flight and before pushing back I noticed how the EQUIP light on the overhead panel was illuminated. When I couldn't find a way to clear it and the QRH told me as long as the pressure looks good you can continue normal OPS even with this light illuminated I decided to give it a go so I carried on pushing back and took off.

 

However when passing FL100 or so the horn went off and I noticed how also the AUTO FAIL lamp was now illuminated. I went back to FL90 and reading the QRH I ended up setting the press mode selector to MAN and kept my eyes on the dials. As far as I could tell they looked OK so I decided to slowly start climbing again and this time no horn went off. I reached my ToC and all seemed to be fine. The press dial was showing the correct altitude so I carried on with the flight and landed safely about 2 hours later.

 

However once I landed and reached the gate I checked for failures in the FMC (and I did this also when I first noticed the problem) but it didn't report any failures which I found strange? Checking for failures now at the destination gate it did report one failure saying something about cabin masks deployed. I cleared this failure and also went in under maintenance and chose the option to 'Service all' to reset the hours to 250 to make sure the a/c was perfectly serviced and with no failures. However whenever I switch the battery to ON I see how the AUTO FAIL and EQUIP lights still illuminate. First I thought maybe it was because I forgot to reset the press mode selector to AUT but doing that didn't change anything.

 

Interesting indeed and now I wonder how to extinguish these lights and make sure I don't have any pressurization issues?

 

Here's a screenshot showing what it looks like when switching the battery to ON.

 

 

 

However once I landed and reached the gate I checked for failures in the FMC (and I did this also when I first noticed the problem) but it didn't report any failures which I found strange?

 

ASUS Mobo?

Wow, so this could be related to the brand of the motherboard!?

 

However I don't have an ASUS motherboard but an MSI Z170A Gaming M7.

No failures in the FMC Maintenance pages usually means either you have an aircraft configuration problem or the aircraft/scenario load operation introduce an illogical error.  I had one of these yesterday when i found one of the INS's wasn't acting normal and switching both sides to the other system created unexpected results.  I too checked the failure status and did some troubleshooting and finally simply reloaded the same scenario and it worked.  I have no explanation.

 

 

Wow, so this could be related to the brand of the motherboard!?

 

Yeah. Problems with the HPET could manifest in all kinds of odd behavior. This is common on ASUS mobos.

 

I have the same mobo as you and it's been fine though.

 

My bet is a corrupted panel state, then.

I tried loading another panel state and then all was fine.

 

Still I find this strange why no faults were reported by the FMC at the beginning of the flight when these lights started to get my attention considering it wasn't just the lights or a "false alarm" since both the horn went off later on during climb and the FMC did report the oxygen masks had been deployed at the end of the flight. Also it would have been nice to know what made this happen in the first place.

 

Oh well, it turned my flight into an interesting one and good it was easy to fix by simply loading another panel state.

Ahh but you will remember this flight much more than a drone point to point flight now won't you  I bet you never saw that light come on before. It's those kind of things that keep it interesting for me. :smile:

Exactly, just as I wrote it certainly made the flight an interesting one and especially when the horn went off during climb.

 

I remember thinking "All seems good except for the lights and the horn so should I just carry on as planned...?" but then when I thought about it and being a potential pressurization problem I thought to myself "I should really stay below 10k until I figure out what is going on and until I know for sure the cabin pressure is OK".

 

Need to think of your PAX right although they are only virtual :wink: