Electrical Failure!

Yesterday 12 FEB 2011, I went on a flight with my friend Frank to practice some instrument approaches, pick-up some oil and have breakfast in St. Louis. When I started up my plane, I had an "low voltage" annunciator light come on and my Essential Bus, showed "red" on my MFD. When I looked at my analog gauges, all was normal. After giving it about 60 RPMs everything turned back to normal and the annunciator light turned off. During run-up everything was normal, so I then proceeded to fly over the Sherman. I picked up Frank and then we took off and I picked up my IFR clearance in the air and headed for Columbia, MO. Periodically I would get a low volt/ALT1 or ALT2 annunciator light and sometimes my Main Bus would light up yellow on the MFD. I have had this happen a few times and my mechanics all seem to think I have some sort of loose wire someplace. My annual is coming up in a few weeks, so we would figure that out then. I shot the GPS RW20 approach, went missed and entered the published hold. After two turns we left the hold on vectors for the ILS RW30 at Jefferson City, MO. Enroute my analog engine gauges started bouncing and then my MFD started to flicker and eventually went out. Shortly there after my NAV/COM#2 went out as well as my TCAS, Terrain, XM, Stormscope, and Transponder. I then cancelled IFR (it was severe clear anyway) and asked for direct to KJEF. Then I realized I lost my fuel gauges, trim and flaps as well. Flying a plane with no trim really sucks to say the least. The tower than proceeded to try to get me headings to a different runway and I had to get direct for RW30 since I just wanted to get the plane on the ground and because I was coming in a bit fast since I had no flaps and wanted the 6,000' runway. The landing was fine, probably a bit too fast and I used basically all 6,000feet to be easy on my brakes (which were hot and mushy at the end) and I taxied over to the FBO. We spent the rest of the day trouble shooting all sorts of stuff and we were lucky that there was a mechanic that was working on his own plane and happened to be very familiar with Cirrus (he had basically the same plane). He and a couple of my COPA buddies on the phone had us check all sorts of stuff. We think that I have either a bad Alternator 1 or a voltage regulator in the MCU (Master Control Unit - the box that controls all the glass avionics). We recharged the battery (which was dead), pulled all the non-essential circuit breakers and flew her back to Kansas City VFR with no issues. I'm just glad we were not in IMC!

Overall it was a great learning experience since now I know exactly what to look for and expect in the event of another electrical issue like this. The redundancy of the aircraft avionics works as advertised. I assumed that my light issue was just a loose wire as my mechanics though since the analog gauges were all showing normal readings. Little did I realize that my battery was taking the entire load until it couldn't support the main electrical bus anymore and shut it down. Basically all I had was the essential bus (PFD, analog flight gauges and NAV/COM #1). The other lesson here is that if you lose your Main Bus, you lose flaps and trim! Now the fun part begins of trying to figure out what heck to do next. Oh the life of aircraft ownership :-)

This would be my second inflight event that I have had to deal with. The first was when my landing gear lever died on my Piper Arrow and I had to do an emergency extension to get them down.