Engine Quit in Flight

[CJSouthern]

Thought I'd treat myself to a flight from NZCH to NZCI. Climbed up to 31,000ft - and at some point during the cruise (had power set quite low - and fuel flow at 39GPH (which is the most relevant figure I could find for best range)) and ... the engine just quit.

Notes:

1. At the end of EVERY flight I both refuel & check the maintenance manager - EVERYTHING was in the green prior to takeoff.

2. I tried an inflight restart; Ng was in the zone for introducing fuel - igniters were on - but no ITT rise (tried several times) - eventually flattened the battery.

3. Checked logs with sim paused - nothing out of the ordinary

4. Went through the checklist - still no joy

5. Exited the sim after the inevitable eventual crash (landed right next to an oil rig so hopefully they rescued me!) and saved the logs and the entire output directory (logs attached)

Is there anyway I/we can diagnose why the engine stopped? Definitely not fuel (although interestingly the fuel flow was still hovering in the 30-35GPH range during the way down). The ONLY "slightly naughty" thing I did was leave Ng at 100.6% (not "106%") for several minutes during a portion of the climb (over 100%, but not quite in the red and no alert).

If something like this happens again (keeping in mind that this happened well into what was going to be about 4 hours flying today) is there any way to "trick" the sim into giving me my engine back and continuing the flight?

Not a "biggie" - just a bit disappointing for someone who takes simming seriously and didn't do anything wrong to "kill" the engine that I know of.

Would appreciate any thoughts.

Log.txt TBM900_Log.txt

[Goran_M]

After looking at 1 thing in your screenshot, and doing a search in your tbm900 log for 1 word, sure enough, found this.

 

You were flying on battery power until the battery went dead, and provided no power to the engine.

Somewhere on the flight, you tripped the Main generator.

It may very well have been worn, or the circuit breaker popped.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Goran_M

[CJSouthern]

33 minutes ago, Goran_M said:

After looking at 1 thing in your screenshot, and doing a search in your tbm900 log for 1 word, sure enough, found this.

 

You were flying on battery power until the battery went dead, and provided no power to the engine.

Somewhere on the flight, you tripped the Main generator.

It may very well have been worn, or the circuit breaker popped.

Thanks for that - but it doesn't quite add up; I would have though that that would have resulted in a CAS Master Caution of "Main Gen" and "Low Voltage" - and there weren't any CAS alerts prior to the shutdown. You can see in the screenshot that there's still no "Main Gen" alert - and although there is a "Low Voltage" alert I'm almost 100% sure that wasn't there prior to the shutdown (I was there in front of the screen the whole time).

I do seem to get Main Gen alerts when starting from the external source, but they're well and truly sorted prior to take off.

[Goran_M]

It's very hard to tell what happened, exactly...but it does appear to be electrical in nature, given you have enough fuel.

In which case, if it does happen again, make sure you check absolutely everything, including circuit breakers.

[CJSouthern]

Thanks Goran.

As a test, once I arrived at NZCI after I got a new a new air frame I parked up - switched the generator off - turned on all the anti-ice systems and landing lights and flattened the battery. MFD cut out at around an hour later at 11 volts - and (using the "output battery voltage" facility in XP) I took the battery to less than 1 volt ... engine kept running just fine - so pretty sure we can eliminate the battery as being the cause.

Can you tell me a bit more about the sim failure logic? eg "even with a relatively new airframe (best guess maybe 20 hours total) and "all green" in the maintenance manager - is it set to still throw in the occasional failure at random for no reason? (interestingly, with the brand new airframe I got a right hand pitot heat failure -- and when I checked the maintenance manager after the flight the right hand pitot heat / stall heater was still showing "as new" (although the fault went away when I replaced it) (circuit breakers were all in).

 

[Goran_M]

For systems explanation, I'm not really the expert on that.  

Feel free to jump in our discord, and you'll find a TBM mechanic and a pilot (who doesn't really frequent it that much anymore), who can answer your questions on the finer details of the TBM.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Goran_M

[CJSouthern]

2 hours ago, Goran_M said:

For systems explanation, I'm not really the expert on that.  

Feel free to jump in our discord, and you'll find a TBM mechanic and a pilot (who doesn't really frequent it that much anymore), who can answer your questions on the finer details of the TBM.

Thanks Goran,

I've not used Discord before, but seem to have figured it out enough to ask a couple of questions there. Hopefully I'll quickly figure out who's who.