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Do you remember the Eielson jet 944 that had the APU auto shut-down problems where A Depot team had to go to Kuwait and fix the damn thing? What year was that, I'm thinking 2000 or 2001 but "Tom" is thinking 98-99 time frame.

BTW the aircraft is now named "the Gremlin". I've been told Eielson was thinking of moving the door to another jet which was being a pain in the butt but 944 didn't like that idea to much. It seems while they were thinking about moving the door 944 developed 1553 problems which almost kicked their butts again! Eielson has desided 944 is "the Gremlin" and the door will <b>not</b> be moved to any other jet!

<img src="http://www.warthogpen.com/art_files/doorart45.jpg" border=0>



Ugly But Well Hung

We inherited that jet when we arrived at AJ (replaced Eielson) in Dec 99. It left before we did, I think at the end of Jan 00.

Coach

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We inherited that jet when we arrived at AJ (replaced Eielson) in Dec 99. It left before we did, I think at the end of Jan 00.

Coach
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Thanks Coach for some reason I was thinking it was later than that.

Ugly But Well Hung

At the Jab during AEF 7 during our rotation in JUL-AUG 2000, the APU was finally fixed and after an inflight ops ck of air refueling it flew back solo to Trapani Italy.

I remember a crew chief named Russ being there when we kicked it out in Aug of 2000. The jet blew sand on startup in the cockpit, had a layer of filth a tidal wave could'nt clean, in the cockpit, and was generally ugly, but old Russ had one helluva nice tan. Anytime we needed him to answer a question, we just went down to the pool and asked.

Smitty

Dice,

Ahh yes 944.....Gremilin would be appropriate
I'm TDY so so I can't tell you exactly, but 1998-99 is about when the problem first cropped up. 2000 sounds about right for the second round when it was deployed to AJ. It was after I went to Langley that it had the problem there.
944 was actually one of my jets when I was at Grissom and it transferred to Eielson just a couple of months before I transferred there. As I remember we had we didn't have any significant problems with it except just prior to transfer it had been to depot for a repaint and when it came back the paint was peeling off it in sheets. After I got to Eielson it was still having paint problems so it was repainted at depot again at their expense.


Being responsible means sometimes pissing people off.
Gen Colin Powell ret

How the whole APU problem started was bizarre in itself as it was relatively trouble free until it went on a mini deployment with 3 other jets.
While at the TDY location it was broke for either a rudder or aileron actuator. While it was down another jet developed an APU problem and the APU, ECU and Load Contol valve were canned out of 944 to fix this other jet. When the parts came in to fix 944, it was then that the APU Gremlin was introduced.
Numerous APU/ECU/Load Control Valve replacements took place and none of them fixed the problem. (It was auto shutting down by the way)
Sometimes it did it while just sitting there running with no load on it. Sometimes it did it during engine start. It was never consistent. To make matters worse, one of the APU replacements was a brand new out of the box APU (first one I ever saw), and it was defective. (We later found out it had metal chips in an oil port which caused it to auto shutdown on the first start of the day because the ECU wasn't getting an oil pressure signal within 10 seconds.)

Being responsible means sometimes pissing people off.
Gen Colin Powell ret

[WE HAD THAT PROBLEM WITH A FEW JETS AND 0166,CHANGED VALVES,STARTERS ETC... COME TO FIND OUT IT WAS THE OIL FILTERS. THE SAND WAS FILLING THEM UP CAUSING THEM TO GET A SHUT DOWN COMMAND FROM THE APU.

CHANGED OUT FILTERS AND NO PROBLEMS

PRESS TO TEST

_________________
\"Live Free Or Die\"

Thanks DB good info!!

Ugly But Well Hung

After getting a known good APU, we ran the APU on the test cell with a known good ECU and Load control valve. Everything ran fine so we eliminated them a the source of the problem. As soon as they were installed on the jet the auto shutdown gremlin would come back, so we started looking on the jet for the cause.
The unit finally threw there hands up and turned it over to us (AFETS) and we wrung it out. At one point we had the APU installed and operating in the jet with only the fuel source conected to the APU. 24v power source, ECU, indicators, etc, were slaved in. We systemactically started hooking stuff back up hoping to find the cause of the problem.
We had the APU test box hooked up (a worthless piece of crap), our instrument guy had other test units hooked up to monitor electrical signals and it would shutdown with no apparent cause. We changed wire harnesses, connectors, shot wires etc.
We obtained a depot level T.O. on the ECU and studied it's funtion in depth. (much more detail into how it works than the aircraft T.O.)
Anyway the botom line to all this is that we found two possible culprits at that time.
1) we found that the load control valve wasn't always operating correctly and that the ground for it passes though the ECU into J1 and out J2 without connecting to anything in the box. It travels all the way up the left side of the jet to the cockpit and grounds to the terminal panel under the throttle. Is that odd or what??
When the ground wire was disconnected coming out of J2 and a slave wire stuck in it's pin hole and grounded to the aircraft at the ground post behind the ECU, the load control valve started working correctly. We cleaned the ground connection under the throttle, but our instrument guy also found that with power on, that long ground wire was picking up power signals from all the wires in the wire bundle so we moved wire to the outside of the bundle.
2) we also found another ground wire that went from the ECU up to th e fuel relay box on the right side of the jet and then down to the sqwat switch on the right gear. It also was giving off spuriuous signals. we moved that wire to the outside of the bundles and cleaned the contacts.
It ops checked good and ran like it's supposed to.
We never did call it fixed as there was no hard repair done. And we added the caveat that we had done all we could do and that if it should come back our recommendation was to have depot rewire the jet.

Of course a year or so later, as soon as it got to AJ it came back.

Ahhhhh the memories!!!!
Cheers
db



Being responsible means sometimes pissing people off.
Gen Colin Powell ret

Dice,

You know 944 was flukey, but do you remember Christine??
It was by far worse than 944 and it's at Eielson too!!
db

Being responsible means sometimes pissing people off.
Gen Colin Powell ret

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Dice,

You know 944 was flukey, but do you remember Christine??
It was by far worse than 944 and it's at Eielson too!!
db

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Don't remember that one DB????

Ugly But Well Hung

Remember the 3 jets that had wiring problems? Whiteman had one, D-M had one and Eielson had I believe 78-0701 that had the uncommanded pitch up/down problem?
Flogged that Hawg for months. It was in the LASTE system somewhere. They ended up calling it Christine because it had a mind of it's own.
db

Being responsible means sometimes pissing people off.
Gen Colin Powell ret

We worked the uncommanded pitch problem in auto pilot. We found that though the TOs state that IFFCC uses BARO exculsively for autopilot corections that it infact uses DELTA. Its an indentified software deal thats being worked. Hence no Rdr ALT=Bad Auto pilot