Electrical Failure
 

Yesterday afternoon flying out of KCHA after selecting gear up had a total electrical failure. Returned to do a no radio landing and selected gear down just to see what would happen and all electrical power came back. Does anyone have suggestions as to what the problem might be. FYI, The power pack was overhauled 3 years ago.

What model and year airplane are we talking about here?

Sounds like you have a later model with the electric power pac?

One place you will want to look is the main electrical bus. There have been several posts about connections, compromised cables and wire connectors.

Battery condition? Accumulator pressure? Alternators and charging system?

There are lots of possibilities. Do you have any other symptoms that might be related? Any other details about the flight that caused this?

My Skymaster is a 74 G model.

One of our contract pilots was bringing the Skymaster to me that day so I do not have first hand knowledge of all that occured. He said during the preflight the battery volt meter indicated 24 volts and the alternators were both charging. As to more specific details he said after the electrical failure he was busy and could not recall any more than that when he selected gear down all power came back.

Thank you Ed and Herb for the reply.

Hmmm.... This is a good one. My airplane is a 73 G. I will have to run this one by my guys at the shop. If you should happen to have more details, please do share. I had a time when my plane would trip the over-voltage sensor during the gear-up process and shut the alternators down. If your battery was no good, I could see this leaving you with no electricity but the fact it all came back after selecting gear down is quite interesting. It would be interesting to know what actions the pilot attempted to recover electricity.

Good Luck with the trouble shooting process. Electrical issues are rarely fun.

Ed

My problem was a bad battery. My mechanic could not find the problem so I did a search of past postings and found one that commented if you have a strange electrical problem with a Skymaster check the battery first. I did and it checked bad even though it had power to run the gear hydraulic pump during the gear test.
10 takeoffs and landings with no problems.