I suspect the real problem was that they quoted on the basis of cheap coax, and they didn’t want to say to me that with the proper cable it would have cost £xxx more.
They got the job because the other shop (which would have used decent coax and probably would have done a decent job) was doing a bit of “creative certification” and wanted 2k for a DER design package for screwing the TAS box to the boot floor! They eventually accepted this was wrong and that it could be done IAW AC43-13-2B (which is what Avidyne said in their STC anyway) but it was too late. I posted on this very topic here previously and got into pretty hot water over it… Both companies will remain nameless; the one which did the work threatened litigation over an unrelated thread started by a customer of theirs, and the other one doesn’t do GA work anymore.
Even that boggles the mind a bit – the amount of coax needed isn’t great, and even if you bought the stuff retail by the meter off Mendelssohn’s, the price delta between RG58 and RG400 would be in tens of pounds for the lengths involved – and it seems silly in the context of an installation that’s costing five figures to begin with. ‘Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence’ tends to want to spring to mind.
I have gone through my emails and the shop said they can use RG400 but they would have to buy it in, and the extra cost to me would be about £10/m.
This is off topic for the Lynx product but it does show that the customer needs to be quite vigilant. It should not be like that! You are a member of the public (even if, like often in GA, the plane is owned by a Ltd Co) and you are going to a vendor who is presumed to be an expert in the field.
After a long waiting, the installation of the Aspen NGT combo is in good progress. I had to wait long, since the avionics shop is so busy, that they even couldn’t tell me when to start. But they they request me, to expedite the process, prepare the aircraft for them. And then, nothing happened. Old KCS55A, GTX, instruments were sold, and I had a disabled bird for months. This was fine, to do some other jobs, like EDM installation, paintshop of the cargo door, making new floor carpet etc. By this time I could renovate the firewall foam too. Next time…
During reproving the avionics, I realised, that our French friends build the aircraft on a special way of thinking.
They take an ADF unit, they riveting the aircraft around it. The ADF rack was riveted into the fuselage. :)
The Central aviation rack is rewired, ADF displaced to the right hand side, new holes drilled, sheet metal work, doublers are ready. Possible end of this week, or MOnday we power up and starting the GND Tests and calibrations. The TAS antenna fitted into the place of the GPS1, and the GPS 1 antenna moved to the most forward position (was empty) The COM2 is replaced by a combined Comant WAAS/COM unit.
There was a “petit” collateral damage of 300 USD approx, when one of the installed super expensive coax cable had to be cut and replaced by RG400. The reason was, that we climped a TNC, instead of BNC connector on both side. Was painful.
Will give more update when getting close to the TestFlight.
Great photos, and very interesting to me too, for future work. Yes, the centre stack comes out so once you get it out (a few hours’ work) it is easy to work on. Unfortunately Socata wired it up so that not all the connections which go into it go via the large circular milspec connectors. A bunch of wires come straight out and one has to un-wire the LH instrument cluster to free them up. I realised this some years ago. It is really dumb. If I was removing the centre stack I would cut through those wires and put a connector in there.
Also interesting how they mounted that large antenna. One has to machine up some metal spacers to go into the thick composite, to avoid it being crushed when tightening up the screws… but it needs to be squeezed just-right otherwise the antenna will be loose From memory, these spacers are about 13mm long.
I hope you don’t get my “12 o’clock” problem, with the large antenna so far back and behind the roof curve. My relocation of it made a dramatic difference. Thread.
I also wanted to point out the position of the antenna, as I am installing the NGT next month and everybody told me it it should be in the front, not at the back of the airplane.
Maybe you could swap it later to the GPS1 position if you have the 12 o’clock issues, but I bet it will be a hassle…
The wires to the central console go from all directions in my case, simply impossible to take it out without removing all the wires, probably a $10,000 rerouting job.
Look at my pictures about the antenna position above (to help I have added them below again). I‘m flying around with it now since January and it is working fine!
It may be that your lack of a tall antenna in front of the TAS antenna is what makes the TAS work ok.
Wow, thanks Peter it is a good point. I have to open it again, possible widening the hole, in order to fit the spacer. I have a good practice already. The doubler had to be removed once, because we forgot to drill the holes for overhead panel. Brrr. Carpet down, doubler off, measuring, trying, re-drilling, fine tuning, and then, surprise !!! , The carpet doesn’t fit. …cause the TAS antenna sockets are larger and they are three so they don fit into the original Socata “bay” originally for RG400 small socket. What I did, I cut a rectangular hole between the 2 ventilation duct in the panel . Luckily, the wide rectangular duct , comes from the fun- divides into two small duct which goes to the outlets. Therefore, the approx 7×5 cm hole does not affect the ventilation.
Working hard…expect the ground testing late today….
