2023-05 · NASA ASRS report 2004197
C182 pilot reported intermittent alternator issues during cruise. The pilot elected to divert and made a precautionary landing.
I was flying a 1998 C182S; Aircraft X; enroute from ZZZ1 to ZZZ2 at 7;500 feet I noticed the radio crackled similar to keying the microphone to turn on runway lights. A few moments later I noticed the electric trim was also not working. At this point I also see the Alt field circuit breaker has tripped and the voltage was reading approximately 11 Volts instead of 24 or 28V. I immediately began a turn back towards ZZZ1 as I cycled everything off and back on to see if the system would reset. The voltage did not change with a cycle and I began to look for a place to land immediately; ZZZ was nearby so that was the clear choice. I set the radio to CTAF and when I tried to transmit my intentions on CTAF the radios stopped responding each time. At this point I decided to squawk 7600 while the transponder was still functioning. I also noticed that the cylinder head temps were showing red lined; and the EGT gauge maxed out as well so I made a direct line towards Runway XX and kept my speed up in case the engine failed too. I did a circle and attempted to stay clear of any other aircraft in the pattern and landed on Runway XX at ZZZ. This electrical failure also impacted the ability to use the flaps and I landed with the flaps half way between up and 10 (the first notch).After the event I reviewed the open and closed squawks for this aircraft and realized this exact failure has happen numerous times over the last 9-12 months. In reflecting there may have been small warning signs that I noticed that seemed very small by themselves but as a whole could have indicated an impending problem. When the aircraft booted up the GPS system had a very odd glitch regarding the screen and text with random pixels unreadable which could have indicated an improper voltage input. Also on takeoff; the engine did not immediately spool to 2;400 RPM; but rather approximately 2;000 then slowly worked up to 2;400 RPM; which could have been potentially caused by the alternator causing serious resistance on the accessory drive. In the moment I believed that it could have also had to do with the outside air temperature being over 80 Degrees F.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.