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Hi

The instructions that came with my aircraft, an Aeroprakt Foxbat A22-LS, said that if a lane light was steady on that you should land immediately, and if it was flashing, you should only fly for 10 more hours. However, people routinely clear a steady lane light by switching it off and on. Also, if you are flying, and the lane light comes on, "immediately" has practicable implications. Is that in trees, a busy road, a small field, a big field, the next airport, the next place you can get repairs.

I did not know, until someone told me, that if a lane light is on, it means that that lane is not working. This means that if a lane light comes on, you should clear it straight away or the engine will be running more roughly on your gearbox. Am I right in thinking that if a lane light comes on steadily (not blinking) that the lane has stopped working? If so, why did Rotax not communicate that more directly? Should the documentation not be changed and made more explicit?

  • Re: Meaning of Lane lamps / lights being on

    by » 4 years ago


    Land at the next airport that's practical for you. A lane light on solid is basically the same as a single failed magneto in a carb engine except unlike a carb engine, you know in flight that it failed instead of at next run up when you do a mag check. You lose redundancy but engine failure is not imminent because you still have one good lane. In theory you could keep flying forever but then if the last lane fails instead of just a lane light turning on the engine will quit.

    If a lane is not working then it won't be any worse on your gearbox and you shouldn't just clear it unless you are troubleshooting because that just hides the problem. The working lane will take over the functions of the failed lane and the engine might run a little rich because it reverts to a "safety" mode where it only relies on necessary sensors like the crankshaft position sensor and ignores sensors that are needed for optimizing fuel economy. But it is no worse on the gearbox and there will be no vibration because the working lane takes over 100% of the functions of the bad lane.

    I don't know why Rotax doesn't document these things more directly. People have noticed a pattern of poor documentation for iS engines.


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