Newbie to MSFS but no stranger to aviation. I am flying a Beech Bonanza from Wichita over western Kansas at 9000 feet with autopilot engaged and an airspeed of 150 KTS heading to Colorado Springs. All a sudden without any input from me the autopilot cuts out, the landing gear deploys, and the engine cuts out. I have response from control surfaces but no response from engine controls. Plenty of fuel and everything in the green when it went south. Same thing has happened three times now in approximately same place. What’s going on? Is it aliens?
Windows 10 Professional (x64) Version 2009 (build 19042.985)
3.70 gigahertz Intel Core i9-10900K
65272 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
Taking guess here is the alternator charging the battery? That would appear to be a potential cause for everything except the landing gear deploying.
Why would the engine cut out? The dual magnetos are not dependent on the battery.
What an intriguing mystery! I have no idea how to solve it but I’m very interested in following this topic.
One question: What control hardware are you using? Joystick, yoke, throttle quadrant, etc.
Thanks everyone for your responses. I will check out electrical systems status next time I “fly”. I am using Logitech G PRO Flight Yoke and Throttle Quadrant.
Tell us the steps you took, maybe someone can reproduce. Cold and dark start or on runway , flight plan low level, high level, direct, vors? free flight? CG, fuel, switches set, lights?
Started on runway “Ready to fly”. Mid day with no weather except for a few clouds at 5000’ Took off to the south and climbed to 5000’. Turned west and engaged AP. Set target altitude 9000’ with a vertical speed of 300 fpm. Engaged NAV-GPS, Direct to Pueblo Colorado (KPUB). I was then going to hand fly to Colorado springs. Didn’t make it! Lost engine power 45 minutes later but I think I know what is going on. Read my general post to follow for more information.
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OK, I think I may know what is going on. I think the fuel gage must not be calibrated. Read on if interested. First I believe the gear deploy was a red hearing. I must have pushed the wrong button on my controller in my panic. Today no landing gear deploy, just a loss of engine power 45 minutes into the flight . Just before this happened I had checked the engine gages (all in green) and fuel level which was in green but close to yellow. I figured I would just change tanks when the left lank was in yellow. I haven’t set up camera controls yet and it took me a while to to find the fuel tank lever. I was falling out of the sky at the time so that didn’t help. When I finally found it I switched to right tank and the engine came alive. But it was too late. While looking for the fuel lever I heard the stall warning so pushed the yolk forward without looking outside. When the engine started I think I went inverted and the rest of the story wasn’t pretty.
I am not a pilot but in the seventies I spent a lot of time in the right seat of twin-prop Cessna’s, usually 310s. The test pilots took a parachute on the first flight and a tech on the second flight. I was that guy. As a flight electrician it was my job to set up the original analogue autopilot and observe any electrical problems.