PA 28 Nav Lights

[londonblue]

This is going to sound like a really stupid question, and I already feel embarrassed to ask, but does anyone know how to get the nav. lights to work on a PA 28?

More specifically, I am talking about a PA28-140 built in 1974?

I have asked other members of the group, but they don't know, and since they don't have a night rating they don't seem to be too bothered!

The switch is a roller next to the rocker switches for the beacon, strobes, fuel pump etc, and has a dual purpose of turning on the nav. lights, and also the internal lights. At first I thought it might be that they are coupled to the strobes or even just the beacon, so I tried all those combinations and still couldn't get them to work.

However, I know there is nothing wrong with the bulbs because, believe it or not, I did get them to work once, but can't work out how!

I really would appreciate some help here, and please go easy, 'cos I feel really stupid asking!

[dublinpilot]

You just roll that switch fully in one direction. From memory, you roll it by moving the dial from bottom to top (moving your finger up) but I may have the backwards!

Nothing else should be required apart from the master switch being on.

Anything else is either aircraft specific, a circuit breaker poped, or something wrong in the electrical system.

[pummel]

On my 1969 PA28-180 there are two roller switches, one to the left and one to the right of the rockers. They switch at one extreme on/off, and then roll all the way to control brightness of internal lights. I cant remember if left is Nav, right Internal or vice versa

[Baikonour]

If they are the same as the one I have flown, they both roll 'up'. When they are fully 'up' you can see the grubscrew at the bottom. LHS nav lights, RHS internal lights, (I believe).

B.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Do you have a POH ?

[londonblue]

Yes. I have looked in there, but it doesn't mention anything...I guess it assumes the pilot isn't an idiot!

[thing]

All of the PA28 variants I've flown have the nav lights on the roller switches as said above. Get someone to stand by the wingtip, bung the battery on and fiddle with the both rollers until you get something. If you don't at a guess I'd say something was bolloxed.

[londonblue]

Thanks thing. You may well be right.

I might actually give the guys who did the annual a call too.

The thing about my PA 28 is that it only has one roller that's supposed to do both Nav and internal lights...unless that's where I'm going wrong and there is another roller switch that I've missed...

[thing]

The nav light one is the left hand one and it should have a click to it when you start to roll it. It also controls the radio stack lights and the gear down lights brightness on an Arrow. The right hand one does instruments. Never seen one with one roller although I believe that the lights are/were an optional extra (!).

[fireflybob]

If it was built in 1974 I recall there is an up and down switch next to the fuel pump and landing light switches on the bottom row of switches located on the right hand side of the starter button.

It was a three stage switch, off was the middle position, low intensity (linked to the interior red light) was down, and full intensity interior light was up!

Let me know if/when you find it.

[superdamo]

It's the single roller switch to the right of the rockers. And it's linked to the cabin/instrument lighting on the pa28-140 that I fly. Intensity increases as you roll. So I'd be digging a bit deeper. :)

SD

[skyhighfallguy]

Hi

As many have said it has to do with the sort of thumb roller switch. Back when I learned to fly in this type in 1975, we left the nav lights ON at all times.

Why?

Well, if the master switch was "ON" and you walked away from the plane , you could simply look back at the plane and KNOW the MASTER was on because the NAV lights would be on.

I am constantly amazed at the questions asked here. while nothing is wrong with asking questions, for someone NOT to know how something works in the plane should send up a signal to you that you are missing out on other things too.


I still remember, as a young student working on his CFI *USA flight instructor, how a flustered ATP CFI came in and said: something is wrong with the flight controls on NXXXXX. They couldn't be moved.

I said, that's the only plane with an autopilot, did you try turning the autopilot off, or the master switch off?

We all went out to the plane and YES someone had turned on the autopilot.

[The CFI] would not admit to [their] error. that was the awful part. SOMEONE on your airfield will KNOW, ask around. and if they don't know ask someone in the FAA/caa in your country.

Good luck and ask yourself what else you don't know!

[9 lives]

Yes, we should always ask ourselves what we don't know, there is always something to learn! If you don't know, ask here - that's why we mentor each other! And, when you get the answer (which has happened in this case), it is memorable!

I support the suggestion that the nav lights are found on the instrument dimming roller switch. That is where I have found them in the past, when I was looking around PA-28's I was flying. My experience has been that that switch function was labeled, but the words might wear off with time, and finger tips wearing on the nearby plastic. So perhaps, the placarding which was there has faded...

Also, that switch function has a bit of a fussy "engage the toggle switch yoke" type mechanism, which has been known to fail. Thus it might be possible to have working instrument lights on the roller, but the nav lights do not function. That could be puzzling, and would be a call to maintenance...

There are a few isolated things on various types, which really ended up being tribal knowledge, as they were missed during certification. The nav light operation in a PA-28 tends toward this in my recollection. Another example of things that a pilot will never figure out, and cannot determine by reading anywhere in the aircraft, would be how you transfer the wing tank fuel in a Lake Amphibian into the main. Best get type training for that, 'cause it's way too simple to ever figure out while you're flying! (I used the "phone a friend" option!;))

[Cusco]

I flew our arrow for 20 years with a rheostat flat sided spindle minus its knob sticking out of the lower panel beside a long dead built in stopwatch below the throttle quadrant

Never had the faintest idea what it did, there was no label and nowt in the POH and twiddling it produced no discernible effect.

Then one night recently in our darkened hangar testing out our newly fitted strobes I gave it a twiddle (no idea why: I'd ignored it for 20 years) and behold! it turned out to be a dimmer for part of the panel, selectively dimming a few of the main flight instruments, independently of the main thumb roller dimmer.

You live and learn.

Still don't use it mind.

[londonblue]

Yesterday I finally got the bottom of the issue.

I went down to the aerodrome to mess around only to find the "leader" of our little group down there. I told him I'd come to check out the nav. lights once again. He told me there was no point as they had been fixed.

Fixed? I asked what he meant. Oh, there was a problem with the contacts, and they were only working intermittently so I have had them fixed.

So, part of me feels vindicated that actually I wasn't going mad, but the other part of me is also really very frustrated because I have been going on about this all winter, and it is now too late in the year for me to fly at night until about October time, and also because they had been fixed without telling me!

Either way, thanks everyone for your input.


(Oh, and dublinpilot, it looks like you were spot on!)