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Slide in TKM 8.33 Khz Nav Comm coming soon (KX155 replacement)!

Archer-181 wrote:

I forgot to mention that I also contacted Trig and their NavComm is nowhere near release,

I would suppose Trig would com with a COM/NAV which would be the same form factor as the TY-96. The rack, and housing has clearly spacing for another SUB-D and coax connector.

Archer-181 wrote:

What I don’t understand is why nobody makes a small NavComm and then provides adapter units which convert into different racks. One radio could then fit lots of racks.

That would look really akward, as the radio would be very small compared to the rack in some cases. This would IMHO only make sense to make a replacement for KX-155/KX165 and KX-155A/KX-165A which have a different pinout but same form factor.

JP-Avionics
EHMZ

The trig nav/com is going to be the same size as their ty96.

I can’t understand why the don’t produce an adaptor to allow a base nav/com to be a slide in replacement.

Narco 12d, king 155 & 170. Would have the majority of market covered and would be massive.

Hi Jesse

In my Archer 181 there is already a matt black filler piece between the radio stack and the DME – you hardly notice it as it’s the same colour as my radios.

If I was making converter trays I would allow the smaller radio to be mounted in either top/bottom or middle positions. A short coax and wiring pigtail would allow that flexibility. Plastic bezels could be supplied as filler pieces. As long as the radio was the same width as the stack I would be quite happy. I am much more upset by different colour displays. If I was TKM I would supply a choice of display colours at extra cost!

As I mentioned, one huge advantage for me about a radio which is less tall than the current King 155/ TKM MX170C is that it would release valuable space for a Garmin.

My eventual aim is to couple a WAAS GPS unit to the Autopilot but to be honest I may wait for 12-24 months and see if Dynon get approved in EASA land. Their 12 inch glass panels are much better value than what I see from Garmin. I don’t like markets propped up by monopolistic regulations/conditions so my instinct is to wait for the free market to kick in.

Last Edited by Archer-181 at 01 Jan 09:40
United Kingdom

There have been several attempts at interface trays for putting new kit into existing installations – Becker AR3201 VHF into a Collins VHF250 tray, or the Garmin GTX320 transponder into a King KT76A tray are 2 that spring to mind, but none sold particularly well. Today you can just do a straight swap of a KT76A with a KT74 or Trig equivalent Mode S transponder, but by not changing the tray and connector you lose out on activating additional features which require additional connections. You also often end up retaining 30 year-old wiring which will inevitably suffer deterioration and also doesn’t meet modern flammability requirements.
I agree that a plug-in direct replacement for the KX155/165 would be a guaranteed seller so it is a surprise that no-one has done this.

Avionics geek.
Somewhere remote in Devon, UK.

wigglyamp wrote:

You also often end up retaining 30 year-old wiring which will inevitably suffer deterioration and also doesn’t meet modern flammability requirements

I think this is also a very valid argument not to be willing to go that route. Especially with the older KX-170/175 kind of models. These don’t have an internal glideslope receiver, so this should stay old, also the DME interfacing is different then on modern radio’s.
Shielding on older radio’s is also different then that of more modern radio’s. If there will be upgrade kits I would expect these for KX-155/KX-165 with of without A.

JP-Avionics
EHMZ

This is an email that TKM sent me a couple of weeks ago – I do agree with Wigglyamp that I would probably change my Antenna at least on the Comm 1 (Comm 2 tends to only get used for the ATIS etc).

So now I am thinking of waiting to see what TKM comes up with!

Yes we are aware of the 20% rebate for converting to 8.33kHz. Do you have any info on when they think this money will run out? We’re trying to market as quickly as we can, but not so quick that the quality of the radio suffers. Our initial plan was to make a radio that had almost the exact same front panel with barely any new features, besides being solid state and capable of 8.33 spacing. Instead we decided to take a little more time and design an entire new front panel with features our previous models did not have.

We know many of our customers are wary of operating a touchscreen while in flight, so initially we steered away from this as well. The ability to have a wider display (less buttons on the face) and the ease of use brought us back to the touch idea. The touch screen is not used for all operations, but more so to select a certain operation. This radio has a beautiful display with a black background and bright white character readouts. The different indicators on the display will be a light blue. The touch screen has different touch points that easily navigate to the different operations of the radio as well as the page menu, with the dial/push knobs being used for cycling through the menu, dialing in frequencies etc. It will have a really easy to use comm and nav memory as well as a built in indicator. From there we will have pages that include things like squelch adjust, transmit and receive power, brightness and volume. All in all we are very excited for it and once I’ve got a good rendering of the front panel I will send it over to you!

Thank you,

Vic Casebolt
TKM Avionics

Last Edited by Archer-181 at 19 Jan 09:53
United Kingdom

@Archer-181 They will be directly replacement for which model? If it is for KX-175 etc it would be really poor and not make much sense IMHO.

If it would be an upgrade for their excisting series, you would still have a 40 year old glideslope receiver for example. Also these new versions have been announced from early 2015. According your post they should prototypes Januari (2017?). That took them two year to build a prototype, there are no photo’s or renderings available on how they would look like. Then they need testing, FCC and TSO approval, and production and ship them in April?

I would be very amazed if that would be April 2017. or even July 2017 seems quite unrealistic. They didn’t mentioned a year, so it could be 2018 as well?

JP-Avionics
EHMZ

Hi Jesse

Well my back-up plan is a Garmin 255A (or even a GTN) so let’s see what happens. As you say, it sounds ambitious to me but there again, TKM was taken over and there does seem to be some enthusiasm with the new owners there!

Perhaps Vic @TKM could post an update? – I gave him a link to the forum.

United Kingdom

Vic emailed me to say that he will post something on this forum soon (by which I think he means in a few weeks or so).

BTW, I post as a happy TKM user, that’s all + I like a bit of competition in the Avionics market!

United Kingdom

Archer-181 wrote:

I post as a happy TKM user

Nothing wrong with that! Good to hear your feedback.

Archer-181 wrote:

I like a bit of competition in the Avionics market!

I think that is only good, from both technical and financial point. Would be nice to see a KX-155/165 slide in. Do you know which side in they are working on for 8,33 kHz? That is a bit unclear to me. An KX-155 / 165 slide in could be a succesfull if they are as quick as suggested. If it would be on KX-175 / MX-170C I would find it hard to see sufficient market for those.

JP-Avionics
EHMZ
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