Is here anyone with experience with this type of radio? It seems that the Dittel KRT2 is the cheapest way to achieve 8.33 compliance and on paper it looks good, but in a comparison done by the Hungary Aeronautical Association it came out so much cheaper than the others that I started to think if it really does what’s promised.
Btw, some Minor Change Approval documents are available only from the German version of the downloads site, not the English one.
We have one in our selflauch glider for almost two years. Initially we had some difficulty with the wiring diagram that had been delivered with it, which was not correct.
Since that’s been solved it works good. Sometimes, we have some trouble with reception, but that’s caused by the location of the internal antenna and has nothing to do with the radio itself. The KRT2 is indeed 8.33 compliant and is able to listen on two frequencies simultaneously.
I would recommend you to spend a little more, and choose for Trig if you want a good quality radio, or go with Garmin. The dealer support for Trig is great as well, so if you have an issue, it will likely be resolved very quick.
I have lots of returns on all German radio brands (for Transponders Garrecht is very good as well). I can’t recommend others. I guess the way they get away with this (and some other manufacturers which have huge issues) that few people actually test equipment.
I have the KRT2 installed and can recommend it, although its operation is not everyones cup of tea. It is very light btw.
Thanks all for the answers.
Jesse wrote:
I would recommend you to spend a little more, and choose for Trig if you want a good quality radio, or go with Garmin. The dealer support for Trig is great as well, so if you have an issue, it will likely be resolved very quick.
I have looked at the TY91 and it looks nice, but my type is not listed in there Minor Change library. Is that an issue? A local Part 145 company says it is not, but I’m not sure.
I’d only go with Garmin if I were to equip the plane for IFR operation, which won’t happen.
I have lots of returns on all German radio brands (for Transponders Garrecht is very good as well). I can’t recommend others. I guess the way they get away with this (and some other manufacturers which have huge issues) that few people actually test equipment.
Is it not obvious if the radio does not work normally? I’d guess ATC/AFIS would give feedback, also for transponders.
JnsV wrote:
I have looked at the TY91 and it looks nice, but my type is not listed in there Minor Change library. Is that an issue? A local Part 145 company says it is not, but I’m not sure.
Not sure which type of aircraft your talking about. If it is under EASA ELA1 category you could use CS-STAN. When you can use CS-STAN for your application you don’t need a minor change.
Jesse wrote:
Not sure which type of aircraft your talking about. If it is under EASA ELA1 category you could use CS-STAN. When you can use CS-STAN for your application you don’t need a minor change.
It is ELA1 (Zlin 142). In that case the maint. company was right, thanks.
JnsV wrote:
Is it not obvious if the radio does not work normally?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
If no reply comes to your preflight radio check, perhaps the radio is dead, but perhaps you are the only active pilot around – happens often at my home field.
If FIS does not answer, perhaps they were too busy. Or perhaps they didn’t hear you, but there may be many reasons for that, apart from a dead radio. Or perhaps they did answer but you didn’t hear – again, multiple causes possible.
Worst of all, an intermittent problem with the radio may be very hard to diagnose.
To top it all, sometimes it isn’t clear whether a defect is in the transmitter or in the receiver, though the former is much more prone to defects.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Worst of all, an intermittent problem with the radio may be very hard to diagnose.To top it all, sometimes it isn’t clear whether a defect is in the transmitter or in the receiver, though the former is much more prone to defects.
Indeed, this reminds me to one of the C152s which I’ve trained on. COM2 works on some frequencies (like LHNY and LHDC local freqs, so not discovered during the radio check), but only transmit and not receive on others, like the FIS frequency for Eastern Hungary. I can now see how such a problem can go undetected for a while.
JnsV wrote:
Is it not obvious if the radio does not work normally? I’d guess ATC/AFIS would give feedback, also for transponders.
Sorry overlooked this one. I did have all kinds off issues, no TX at all (noticeable), squelch circuits which don’t respond. But also random TX (not funny) to transmitting on the wrong frequency, and low sensitivity.
Frequency errors and low sensitivity are quite hard to detect for owners. On all radio’s you will have some drift, this can be good (more towards the standard) or away (radio becomes unuseable. If you have to ground your aircraft, and wait for a couple of weeks for the radio to be repaired, a quality radio would have been better. Trig is very quick with support. Last two months I had for example one German branded transponder and radio. Transponder had no output, unit must be returned, radio would not transmit. This basically grounds these aircraft.
Remember the Filser transponder AD? At one point the situation was such that you where not allowed in transponder mandatory zones with such a transponder. This was not due to the best quality. These units still commonly fail with several issues, frequencies drifted out of tolerance, no side lobe supression, wrong pulse width’s.
From my experiance Trig makes the best quality, and even these sometimes fail, when the fail, the problem is useally fixed the next day. Garrecht and Garmin would be on a shared second place.
