My ultralight originally had an Icom I6 and a Hungarian-made intercom. This worked satisfactorily but could be better – when I took off from my homefield I had to climb to at least 2000’ before FIS could receive me. On top of that the intercom gave up, for no clear reason. I replaced it with a typical ultralight intercom from ULM technologies, that was not expensive but neither did it last much longer than the Hungarian stuff. And also, one day I would have to get 8,33 ability anyway.
With the good flying season coming on, and having at least some budget and even a certain degree of stable income, I decided to bite the sour apple and buy a proper aircraft radio, with the intercom integrated as most have today. The Trig TY91 is not the cheapest but got only positive reviews, and this not a thing to buy very often, or so I hope, so Trig it was to be.
I got a nice discount for installing it myself, plus the offer of post-installation check/verification by the dealer. An unpleasant surprise was the unavailability, contrary to what seems usual for them Trig needed two weeks to deliver.
I finally collected the radio last Wednesday, spent Friday soldering cables, and installed and flew it today.
The installation is straightforward, only I had expected the head and body could stack onto one another which is not the case. The advantage is that the panel is only loaded by the diminutive weight of the controlling head, on the con side extra cabling is required. Installing the body is easy as it comes with a lightweight tray to be fixed in the plane, the actual radio then lightly clips in. The controller head fits a standard 57 mm hole.
Nice: the package is very complete with all screws, good quality crimp connectors (a DB15 for the controlling head and a DB25 for the radio body, and a TNC for the antenna). The use of TNC for the antenna was unexpected, I had to go and get a BNC adapter. I do not doubt the TNC is superior but it would have been nice if the BNC adapter had been included. That is really the only point I can complain about, though. Oh, yes, mounting screws are “4-40” which must be a very British thing, I thought in this era they would use M3.
In flight it is very nice to use, with the usual concept of an ‘active’ and a ‘standby’ frequency; the last one is set with two concentric rotating knobs. One toggles between them with a push button. A very nice feature is the “mon” button that allows listening to the standby frequency on top of the active. I can imagine, on cross-country flight, to have the nearest aerodrome on one frequency and FIS on the other.
During flight today, I contacted Brussels Info from 1500’ and presto, good comm’s, no issues whatsoever so the radio is definitely superior to the A6. That one will now go in the “emergency equipment” with a rubber “ducky” antenna and a pack of alkaline batteries.
One facility to discover – it is announced but scarcely documented – is the ability to receive a list of frequencies from a GPS unit – I would certainly love to use that, but will have to find out how to activate it.
Ergo: a good buy, as far as I can see now. I am certainly a happy customer.
Last and above all: all praise to the dealer (of course it was Jesse) who went out of his way to get the unit ahead of the normal delivery date, I really needed it sooner and Jesse worked up to that. On top of that, he took all his time to explain the installation and promised to look it over after installation. What more could one ask for?
The TY-91 use NMEA input, with Apollo SL40 /Garmin VHF out format ($PMRRC). This means the GPS actually transmits the nearby frequency database to the TY-91. The TY-91 has an own memory / database of 9 frequencies.
On some other products (Garmin GTR/GNC) for example, regular NMEA is used, and the database in the radio is used. GPS is then used as position source only.
Jan
Using 4-40 screws is not a very British thing, it is a very aviation thing, all of aviation apart from a few light aircraft manufacturers in Europe use American standard hardware.
I suspect the only reason that the Europeans use metric hardwere is because they can make more money by selling it to you rather than have you buy readerly avalable and cheap American hardware.
You won’t find any metric stuff so an Airbus !
I suspect the only reason that the Europeans use metric hardwere is because they can make more money by selling it to you rather than have you buy readerly avalable and cheap American hardware.
Outside the aviation sector metric hardware is much more readily available and at least as cheap as non-metric. Well, maybe not in Britain…
Make that “outside the sector of certified aviation”.
Vic
The whole of serous aerospace uses American hardwere all the minnows you list above have an annual production don’t add up to a week of output from the Americans, Rolls-Royce , BAe and Airbus.
I run by Robin dispite the incredably expensive metric hardware rather than because of it, if the DR400 was built with American hardware rather than the low quality metric rubbish it would have had a chance at selling in the biggest aviation market on the planet.
Its come up here before, but I’ve never seen evidence as to whether governments other than the US (in any period) have ever created standardized, industry wide aerospace fasteners and hardware, as per the AN and MS system. Selecting approved aircraft hardware from a catalog and specifying it by AN or MS part number is a hugely beneficial and economical thing for both end user and manufacturer. Its hard to believe that no other country had the foresight to do it – regardless of the size convention.
What you often find on non-US built light aircraft is that the non-structural hardware is metric and the structural and critical mechanical hardware is AN or MS. I can buy all of that within a 20 minute drive of where I’m sitting as I write, and that’s true for a lot of other people worldwide, so its a pragmatic approach by the manufacturers.
What is difficult to obtain is custom made aircraft structural hardware built for a particular aircraft application in Russia, France etc. That would be equally true if I were sitting in Russia or France etc.
Rolls-Royce , BAe and Airbus
who have little relevance in the field of GA, which is the subject matter of this forum – particularly non-certified GA which is the subject matter of this particular thread.
Not even entering the discussion of what defines serious(sic!) aerospace.
The problem is not that a metric bolt costs more to make than a US bolt. Of course it does not (for a given production volume).
The problem is that the metric world does not have a system of “standard parts”. This is e.g. the US AN system which covers bolts, pipe fittings, and stuff like that i.e. most of the “little bits” which make up a plane.
Even transistors and diodes are “standard parts” these days so to repair something in the US system if you need a BC109 you don’t need to buy it as P/N 803-12345-0033-5643 from Honeywell for $253.55. You buy a BC109 from any supplier which can supply it with a CofC and that means just about any electronic component distributor.
The term “standard part” has a specific legal meaning and e.g. the FAA owner produced parts concession prohibits owner production of a standard part.
For example AN821 is this
but in the metric world there is no such thing. You have to dig around to find a metric version and it will be something obscure. And expensive!
The metric system is a gift to an aircraft manufacturer’s parts business, because it is very difficult for his customers (even those who fully understand their options for parts sourcing, which is maybe 1% of owners and maybe 10% of maintenance shops) to bypass him. With standard parts it is trivial to bypass him, so nobody with more than 2 braincells buys an AN part from an aircraft manufacturer. (Well, they do if it’s an insurance job 
) This translates to a big benefit to the customer.
