Hear the valiant knights of the Holy Grail… “Run away!”
I’m having flashbacks of the new technology called the Global Positioning System and how we should only let our ADF’s be pried from our cold, dead hands…
This whole “fear the solid state device” thing is humorous for me.
If you’re building an airplane on a budget, use fuses. But for everyone else building a $200K+ airplane, enjoy life a little… use a VP-X. I have heated seats too.
If you’re poo-poohing the VP-X because it’s somehow a “black box” (which isn’t really accurate) and not to be trusted, as in “if you want to use that device, go somewhere else”, you should really study the available data on solid state versus mechanical device reliability. Full disclosure, I built two aircraft using circuit breakers and bus bars, which worked fine. But I’ve also had zero issues with my “black box” VP-X systems that I’ve installed, both the Sport and Pro.
While concerned about the reliability of the solid state technology in the VP-X, compare your Garmin or Dynon ADAHRS to your old vacuum pump and consider which is more reliable and which you’d prefer in IFR conditions. And then consider a backup anyway. And that’s what I did with my VP-X installations.
I’m on my second VP-X build, this one being a Pro and built-out fully, much like Bob’s -10, with every circuit used - actually every pin in the device is in use. But then I also have a separate emergency bus for my critical loads, such as my EFII (oh, wait, we might need to rehash EFII vs carburetors again as well). And I also have a G5 with a separate backup battery. And an auxiliary battery. And a backup alternator.
There is risk to everything in life; the key is determining your level of acceptable risk, and then managing to that.
There’s a lot of variability with our experimental aircraft, with a big variable being how we perform component installation. Pointing to a single failure, or even multiple ones, shouldn’t preclude someone else from venturing into using the technology. Using the logic that a failure occurred with a particular component, therefore we should not use that component, leads to the logic that if an RV-10 crashes because the Lycoming engine stopped, we stop using Lycoming engines. Or maybe we just shouldn’t install the engine with RTV in the fuel system.
There’s lot’s of details to be learned about so many things… a curious detail is the dearth of information on supposedly unreliable VP-X systems. Food for thought: I still have the stinging memory of the cost that came with replacing all of my circuit breakers on my Baron after an AD came out years ago declaring the models I had no longer airworthy.
Closing thought: A black box is defined by Oxford’s encyclopedia as: “any complex piece of equipment, typically a unit in an electronic system, with contents that are mysterious to the user”. Having pulled the cover off of the VP-X and having become familiar with the internal components, I find that it’s a fairly simple design and well laid out - significantly the dual bus system. Maybe becoming more familiar with the technology will make it less daunting for folks.