540 went DARK right after T/O!

I have a 540 and it did something the other day that is a deal killer - it completely shut down and rebooted right after takeoff!  I was on an IFR flight plan on a VMC day flight.  I had entered a complex flight plan including a departure procedure that I was flying at the time.  Less than 200 feet after takeoff and the whole box just shut itself off!!  All the other radios and equipment continued working normally so I know it was something in the 540.

A few seconds later it came back on, again all by itself.  When it finished the reboot it had lost my flight plan, of course.  I was in a busy Class B airspace and not interested in fooling around trying to get all that data reloaded, fly the airplane, talk to ATC (nonstop), etc.

I know there could be an issue with the power from the airplane, but all the other electrical stuff was running fine.  Any radio the CAN reboot in flight is a very hazardous thing - imagine a reboot in IMC during an approach.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Experience says: "it is likely not the IFD 540 at fault".  A bad connection, a gap in insulation, a bad breaker all could result in such.  But with it happening on takeoff?:

Many years ago, no long after we bought our plane, I observed the GEMS (engine monitor) reboot in flight.  Not critical, but something we'd need to address, so I'd need to pull the GEMS and send back to Insight.  On a later takeoff, before I'd pulled it, I noticed it reboot shortly after takeoff.   Over a few flights I observed it happened every takeoff and landing, and occasionally in flight.  Which led to the answer:

It wasn't the GEMS, or even the wiring to the GEMS (except indirectly).  The problem turned out to be a corroded crimped connector on the main bus circuit breaker.  DC electric motors (especially series wound) draw extra current at low speed - extra current leads to extra voltage drop across a resistance; extra voltage drop leads to extra current. A vicious cycle, one might say.   Any time the gear pump would drive against a load (the gear at the limits), current increase and pull the bus down.  The GEMS happened to have the highest (or only) reboot threshold of any of my avionics ( it was probably the only digital device in the plane at the time).  The gear pump is cycled only by a pressure switch; and the gear is held up in flight by hydraulic pressure.  Over time during flight the pressure would bleed off, the pump would briefly come on, and the GEMS would be rebooted.  And of course on every takeoff or landing when retraction or extension was complete. 

In troubleshooting, I reproduced it on the ground by closing the squat switch while monitoring the bus.  For a fraction of a second, the bus pulled down to 9V.   I visually inspected the lines from the battery to the bus, and the culprit was obvious when I got to it: a combination of charring (!!!) and blue copper sulfide.

Yes, if it really were an IFD-related issue (including loss of input power), that would almost certainly show up in the logs.  If you supply the full set of logs to Avidyne tech support and give them a copy of this description, they will get it to Engineering for assessment.

Could be an electrical spike that triggered the overvoltage relay!

The logs were sent to Avidyne a few weeks ago but I haven't heard anything yet.

Anybody?  Anybody?  Bueller?

Royski wrote: I had the same rebooting problem in flight recently and they suggested updating to the latest 10.1.3.0 software (I am on 10.1.2).  This seems odd because I thought 10.1.3 was only to address GPS issues in Europe and the like.