RV10: IFR | Alternator Failure

After a smooth takeoff and a gentle climb, the yaw damper trips the circuit breaker as soon as we pulled the prop back. After trying to reset the breaker it pops again followed by the roll servo also tripping the breaker. After shedding the load the breakers the current draw on the main bus begins to act erratic. We switched to the backup alternator and everything stabilized. Even though we were IFR we had VMC conditions and decided to continue the flight back to home base. Upon landing we switched over to the primary alternator and it was no longer outputting any voltage (at least higher than battery voltage).
#rv10 #experimentalaircraftchannel #airplaneflying @garminaviation ​

[@pilotadib6027]

Glad everything worked out.

[@Brantel.]

Never keep just resetting over current on the VPX or breakers. They trip for a reason!

[@voyages716]

Nice. Gotta love the redundancy

[@JeffKarrels]

You don’t need it until you need it. Would have been a long drive home without it.

[@mackenzier8816]

I love this video!

[@leekitsonrv8]

Nice that you had a backup autopilot to fly while you troubleshot the problem 😊. What alternator do you have? Also, I’m surprised you got VPX faults on individual circuits for an alternator failure rather than a warning that the alternator had failed. Thanks for posting this. I have a VPX in my RV-8 (but no backup alternator) so it’s good to see how an Alt failure might look.

[@JeffKarrels]

The original was a Plane Power AL12-EE70/B with a R1224 External Regulator. After troubleshooting I replaced the R1224 as I couldn't get myself to believe it was the alternator. Short story, it was the alternator. I replaced it with a certified AL12-70. (mainly because that is what I could get next day).

[@Psymbob]

I thought RV 10's had 4 seats?

[@JulienGordon]

What avionics etc are you running in that RV10?

[@drummondgrinalds1524]

Did you figure out what happened to pri alt? What kind was it? Do you think it’s better to run both pri and stby simultaneously with stby volts set lower or to manually switch pri to stby. It seemed like your pri voltage stable but current up and down. Did ANL fuse blow?

[@JeffKarrels]

I only ever have one alternator active at any given time. When I took apart the alternator it looks like the slip ring had a build up on it that ended up sorting out the shaft to ground. Not sure how that happened but in short the field 1 wire was shorted and no longer working.

[@JeffKarrels]

I have my voltages set separately between the two alternators not because I run them both simultaneously but rather so I know what I’m looking at when I change which alternator is active. Also, with the change of one wire I could have two completely separate busses run from two different alternators, but in the current configuration I have a cross feed between the two busses controlled by a switch.

[@1shARyn3]

background music WAY too loud