[Username Protected]

On takeoff yesterday the "ENGINE" caution light illuminated and stayed illuminated. I returned and shutdown the aircraft to investigate. Checking "A" side ignition after shutdown, the FUEL PRESS light stayed illuminated. B side and BOTH checked normal. The "ENGINE" caution light went out when checking BOTH as well as the LAND AIRCRAFT light (normal indication).

Sent report to service center for investigation. This was the wife's maiden voyage in the Icon...

Her words, "I'm scared of the Icon now."

[Username Protected]

They will likely have to do a BUDS download from the Rotax to see what triggered the Engine light. Could have been something transient. I had a similar alert earlier this spring, but with the G3X you can get a read-out of the failure on the Engine page.

https://www.iopa.org/threads/376-Cyl...Ignition-Fault

[Username Protected]

@Marcus - glad you were able to get your issue resolved. I'm hoping mine will be able to be fixed quickly. Last year it was down a month waiting on the BUDS download review and repair.

[Username Protected]

Several cases you don't have to shut down the engine. You can land do the run up again and see if it clears. Most of the engine lights I see are egt sensors. But buds is usually very quick to point to the problem.

You can show her it is a minor thing bringing your attention that it needs to be looked at. Sometimes running the checklist with her helps.

[Username Protected]

I showed her that according the POH, you could technically run it with the engine caution light on for 10 hours and that seemed to help. Just bad timing for her first flight.

A few days after this, I did another lane check and it checked normal. Did a engine runup and it also checked out fine with no engine caution light. Flew a few times since with no issues. It's scheduled for annual on July 7th, so will do a BUDS download at that time.

[Username Protected]

I can identify with your wife's concern Dave - when you see that annunciator come on it does grab your attention. In my own case I had the combination LAND AIRCRAFT red one along with the yellow ENGINE one. Took a while to get to root cause but, with the help of the B.U.D.S. download eventually isolated it to a corroded out plug wire connection to the bottom #1 cylinder.

There's actually good news here - the system did it's job and you did yours. And if you think about it, its an engine issue, not necessarily an Icon issue. I've seen some past posts on this forum about fuel pump issues so wouldn't be a bad idea to familiarize yourself with that - when you get into discussions following the return of the service report, you'll at least have some idea of questions to ask.

The EEC that monitors and triggers these annunciators is pretty sophisticated, as I discovered during the Rotax engine course I took at Lockwood Aviation and that ENGINE light could actually be flagging an impending fuel pump failure - it's basically saying to you that, among all the parameters its monitoring, this one (or more) is not in the "normal" range and should be looked at. In the course of my 40+ years as an Avionics Systems engineer with Lockheed Martin, I was involved in architecting some fairly complex alerting systems in integrated cockpits, mostly for special ops aircraft, and I've been impressed so far with what I've seen on the Icon - one of the main reasons I decided to spend the extra money for it, when I could have had a Super Cub on floats for a lot less.

I'd be curious to know root cause on your issue and hope you will do follow-up posts as you learn more. Appreciate you sharing this.

[Username Protected]

Caution is a heads-up computer saws a code. I’ve not had in flight, but on ground during a funky start where some student goes key crazy. Shutdown and restart (obviously not in flight since you can fly for 10hrs with light on), or do a normal run up, then computer sees everything is ok and light goes out. Having two layers of computers talking to each other (Rotax one and and the strapped on ICON one, “1s” and “0s” can get out of wack. Overall, these engines are tough as nails IMO.

[Username Protected]

I'll definitely follow up after annual. 4 blade prop install and updated POH at the same time.

I'm not concerned, as pointed out the system did it's job and the airplane never failed us. My wife had her bikini on ready get in the water for her first ride and it was cut short. She's ready to get back out this week sometime.

[Username Protected]

Yeah, with non-pilot people it can seem worse than it really is. I have oddball things happen like the engine starts, But the RPM gauge is not working, or the Prius engine light. With those you just reset the computers by shutting the engine down and turning the power off and counting to 10 and then trying again. They normally clear up. Other weird things I get are an airspeed indicator that momentarily drops to zero and then back to the airspeed, or while I’m in night time cruise my bilge light is just barely on. On cold morning taxiing, your fuel pressure light may flicker, your you may need half throttle to get engine to start. All are know quirks but can be alarming at first. Have fun swimming! But as my wife learned, when you get in the water swimming, do not swim up wind of an icon that’s blowing away or you are in for a very hard swim to catch up…

[Username Protected]

FYI - The bilge light faintly flickering at night has been a known issue with Icon for a few years now. Really surprised they have never addressed it - but I guess they have had bigger fish to fry for quite a while now. I still remember a late night flight from Houston to Dallas when my wife and I first noticed it - yikes! IF I remember correctly I found that IF you turn the strobes off the bilge light stops flickering.

[Username Protected]

Yep, former ICON guy Gary said dim bilge light was a known issue. It's like the LED house light that remains faint on some switches. Probably a small resister in circuit would get it to drain the residual current below the light's threshold. Hmmmm
Now I never tried turning off strobe. I'll try that next time. Yeah wife noticing stuff is not good, unless they are pilots. You definitely don't want them nervous and not on the team.

[Username Protected]

There are a few Icon electronic issues I've learned too over the last year. Most are just anomalies like the flickering bilge light at night with the aircraft never faltering.

@Erich - I'll definitely keep a rope attached when we go swimming. Wife is a great swimmer, but don't want to test my luck lol

[Username Protected]

She will love the swimming experience. I’m sure all learn our own technique for getting back on the drawing. Some folks are more graceful than others, but getting back on is key!