Hello All!
Quick question from a New Guy…
I am the Proud Owner of a new-to-me 1981 Seneca III!
She’s beautiful and fun to fly!
One thing I kinda missed on the Prebuy was the proper intensity of the panel lights.
When I, and the IA, looked at them, they seemed to work, but flying the other night, they are very dim, almost unusable at that level of intensity, even when cranked all the way up.
So I’m confused…
My experience on other Piper products, is these panel lights can be so bright that you gotta turn them down at night, but not these.
Is this just a Seneca thing??
My airplane has a integral lighting arrangement but the bottom Fuel Flow Indictor has post lighting.
There are actually 2 knobs controlling the panel lights, one marked “Panel” the other marked “Radio”.
The “Radio” lights are just fine, they go full bright and dim nicely. That rheostat only lights a single OBS Indictor just left of the IAS and the Garmin Audio Selector Panel. All the other Avionics are self lit.
As an A&P I tried doing a little bit of troubleshooting and cleaning the contacts, but it’s beyond my paygrade. My IA is looking into it now, but I was wondering if the group might know something about this particular question.
Along with the integral lighting this Seneca III also has Overhead Lighting on the ceiling that shines down and forward on the panel from 2 ceiling lights and a single light on the left sidewall by the pilots left knee that shines up and forward. Those lights work fine with the Panel Light rheostat. They are to “bathe” the entire panel in indirect lighting, but still there is a lack of intensity from the individual instrument lights themselves.
So, just not sure if this is something I gotta live with for now, or if there is something wrong that we can fix??
Maybe in the individual rheostat potentiometer??
Maybe swap ‘em??
Or is that just the way it is until Mr. Piper fixed it in the IV and V.
Help, Over…. ?
Thanks!
Stay Safe, Fly Fun!
George– hgeorgec@aol.com
CLE
