What I think Socata did was they ran wires directly, but those wires do terminate on connectors which are on the back of various instruments.
So e.g. they ran the gray code wires (10) direct from the centre stack to the back of the KEA130A altimeter, and if you want to remove the centre stack you have to undo all the wiring behind the LH instrument cluster and unplug the DB connector from the KEA130A. Not nice, but an acceptable “Gallic shrug” way of doing things.
This photo shows both the circular connectors (in the GT) and marked in the red are the wires running straight in
Unfortunately many installers hate the “TB20” (all TB20s regardless of model) and jack up the quote to either cover themselves for the worst or make you go elsewhere. One quote I had a while ago (for installing a GNS530W) was like that and the installer was quite open about it, saying “it’s a TB20 so what do you expect”….
I think that, for new wiring, a very acceptable solution is to run wires straight into the centre stack but have an inline connector in them, located very obviously nearby.
On the GT you can remove the centre stack in about 1 hour – if you really know the model. On the pre-GT, maybe several hours. That’s assuming no bodges have been done.
Thanks Peter. It’s important that I know what I’m letting myself in for. Sounds like £1,000 or so for PMA8000BT…and some multiple of that to get it approved and fitted. What a pity!
I’ll try to get a quote from my very helpful and knowledgeable engineer Graham Corbin, and his equal colleague Humphrey Penney. My plane is just coming out from its 50-hour check and I’ll consider having this work done either at the annual in March or the following 50-hour check.
Howard
What would you use BT for?
I had bluetooth on my old headset and used it only in my old car.
I see no point in having bluetooth in an aviation headset.
The Bluetooth is intended to let you use a phone in the aircraft via the aircraft headset or to stream music from a mobile device……. I can only assume this is for the passengers !
The complexity of Instalation should not be underestimated, it is critical to install the electrical cables as per spec or you will get some sort of interference. This will undoubtedly require the removal of all the old intercom cables.
I am currently in the process of fitting a PS8000BT to my aircraft as part of a major upgrade, while not rocket science the job requires a lot of carefull attention to get all the interfaces correct.
I recently had a PMA8000BT installed alongside some other work on the radio stack. IMO its not worth doing as a standalone project, but the incremental cost is much lower alongside other work.
Have to admit I love listening to music while flying! With the volume down low you can still hear everything else perfectly.
I can listen to music with my ‘7000 intercom’s music input, but it is near-useless because the music (correctly) gets muted when there is any radio talk, and in a typical ATC environment there is so much talk that the music is not worth listening to. Especially as the music source is just suppressed (muted) and is not paused like my VW sound system does when you go into reverse.
I’ve had multiple opportunities to get music playback, most recently via the Bose A20 headset which has a BT option, but have not bothered because it just doesn’t work in the sort of flying I do (both low level VFR and high altitude IFR).
I know one can fly in UK Class G non-radio but I choose to not do that, and merely turning the radio volume down doesn’t stop the automatic muting of the music.
The nicest feature of a modern intercom IMHO is the ability to listen to say COM2 while you are on COM1 – for picking up the ATIS etc. But that is a very old feature.
I must say I use the music input feature of the G1000 quite a lot. I plug in a Bluetooth adapter to connect to my iPhone and Spotify. I do not use this during take off and landing and I unplug the adapter as soon as I sense an increased cockpit workload (specifically: flying through busy control zones such as EDDL) because that’s the fastest way to get it to stop. Another option that I have used, especially with all seats occupied with chatty passengers, is to isolate e.g. during landing. That way the passengers can talk and listen to music and I can focus on the landing without distraction.
I know one can fly in UK Class G non-radio but I choose to not do that, and merely turning the radio volume down doesn’t stop the automatic muting of the music.
The G1000 allows you to turn the auto-mute on and off. Should you not catch an ATC message (e.g. due to music….) you can replay it. Never tried that, though.
The G1000 allows you to turn the auto-mute on and off.
Same on the PMA8000BT. I fly with mute off, and the music set to minimum volume on the iPhone.
Dear Vref:
We now have EASA approval on our new PMA7000BT, the audio panel that you mentioned you might be waiting for. While the bottom connector is exactly the same that is used in the KMA24, there is a “top connector” for all of the intercom functions. The PMA7000BT has our IntelliVox and provides various types of music telephone control. PMA7000BT
Mark Scheuer
PS Engineering, Inc.
