denverpilot
Tied Down
Okay, the long and annoying story of the DME.
It's a King KN-62A.
It failed on the way home from Nebraska right after the Instrument checkride. (At least it survived that.)
The Transponder failed at roughly the same time.
We take it to Freedom Avionics at BJC. Requires permission to fly it up there from DEN TRACON for Mode C veil to take a transponderless aircraft across town. Done.
They pull both, Transponder tests fine on the bench, DME won't power up.
Aircraft tested, coax to Transponder antenna has failed shorted. Freedom swaps DME coax over to Transponder to give it a working antenna. Sends us home with new W&B minus 2.4 lbs of DME, so we're legal and we fly some already scheduled flights (my trip to Gaston's).
They call and say DME fixed. It blew a fuse. Bench time charged. Half price on rediculously priced fuse ($27) from King. We retrieve DME and put it back in the tray, swap W&B and it works for one flight.
DME drops out again next flight, no power.
More scheduled trips intervene.
Having read some disenchanted owner stories about Freedo online, we discuss with new Avionics tech at APA. Taking the aircraft across town is a small annoyance.
They say it's likely the display failing since it blows the fuse at power up and a brief flash of the display is seen.
They recommend we change the fuse ourselves again just to make sure, since it's a pilot-accessible item which doesn't require a yellow tag, and they peek around inside the DME for any signs of blown/damaged components and do the old sniff test for burning. Nothing showing.
$27 full-price fuse from a third party parts vendor acquired. And installed.
Avionics master on, fuse sizzles and blows instantly. Damn.
Discussion now ongoing:
- Repair existing DME. Unknown price.
- Buy yellow tagged identical DME and swap in. Perhaps having tray and harness double checked prior to installation. Roughly $2K.
- Bite a big bullet and move the entire stack down, replace #1 OBS, and install Garmin. $6500 for a used 430W minimum, not including installation or #1 OBS.
- If Garmin, decide if dual-ILS capability desired. Move existing #1 OBS w/ glideslope down to #2 hole and keep current #1 Nav/Comm while dropping #2 Nav/Comm and #2 non-glideslope OBS. And remove DME and DME Nav 1/2 switch altogether.
- Or... fix/replace DME AND add Garmin. (unlikely)
The real bummer? Likely we'll have flyable IMC here tomorrow or Thursday.
Can go up /U but once up, can't get back into home base. No approaches into APA that don't require /A or ADF on board. Crud.
Could go up anyway and strand the airplane at BJC, FTG, FNL, or GXY and bring it home this weekend.
Seems kinda stupid though.
Thoughts from the peanut gallery?
- Would you risk stuffing a different DME in that tray? (I'm thinking no.)
- Anyone know a great King repair shop? We've got the alternate W&B so tossing this thing in a FedEx box for a solid going-over isn't a problem. Plus if we decided to resell it, it's going to be worthless broken and barely worth anything repaired, I suspect.
- Had a thought a one point that we like the King Comm radios better than we like the Garmin Comm stuff -- they're rare, but the non-Comm version of the 430W might be out there somewhere. Can't quite figure out if that GPS has the Nav ILS/VOR receiver in it or if that's also stripped out from docs I've been looking at. Still means problems for the intercom wiring though, since we'd then have three Nav heads to Ident.
- Resale values. I've looked up some numbers, but what's realistic for a King KN-62A, and/or a King KX-155 w/o glideslope and non-GPS capable OBS? Probably not a lot, but not zero I'm guessing. (I'll have to look up the OBS model number, but it's one model before the one that added the circuitry to interface with King GPS units.)
Just thinking out loud here. Feel free to join the fun. No reasonable thoughts discarded.
It's a King KN-62A.
It failed on the way home from Nebraska right after the Instrument checkride. (At least it survived that.)
The Transponder failed at roughly the same time.
We take it to Freedom Avionics at BJC. Requires permission to fly it up there from DEN TRACON for Mode C veil to take a transponderless aircraft across town. Done.
They pull both, Transponder tests fine on the bench, DME won't power up.
Aircraft tested, coax to Transponder antenna has failed shorted. Freedom swaps DME coax over to Transponder to give it a working antenna. Sends us home with new W&B minus 2.4 lbs of DME, so we're legal and we fly some already scheduled flights (my trip to Gaston's).
They call and say DME fixed. It blew a fuse. Bench time charged. Half price on rediculously priced fuse ($27) from King. We retrieve DME and put it back in the tray, swap W&B and it works for one flight.
DME drops out again next flight, no power.
More scheduled trips intervene.
Having read some disenchanted owner stories about Freedo online, we discuss with new Avionics tech at APA. Taking the aircraft across town is a small annoyance.
They say it's likely the display failing since it blows the fuse at power up and a brief flash of the display is seen.
They recommend we change the fuse ourselves again just to make sure, since it's a pilot-accessible item which doesn't require a yellow tag, and they peek around inside the DME for any signs of blown/damaged components and do the old sniff test for burning. Nothing showing.
$27 full-price fuse from a third party parts vendor acquired. And installed.
Avionics master on, fuse sizzles and blows instantly. Damn.
Discussion now ongoing:
- Repair existing DME. Unknown price.
- Buy yellow tagged identical DME and swap in. Perhaps having tray and harness double checked prior to installation. Roughly $2K.
- Bite a big bullet and move the entire stack down, replace #1 OBS, and install Garmin. $6500 for a used 430W minimum, not including installation or #1 OBS.
- If Garmin, decide if dual-ILS capability desired. Move existing #1 OBS w/ glideslope down to #2 hole and keep current #1 Nav/Comm while dropping #2 Nav/Comm and #2 non-glideslope OBS. And remove DME and DME Nav 1/2 switch altogether.
- Or... fix/replace DME AND add Garmin. (unlikely)
The real bummer? Likely we'll have flyable IMC here tomorrow or Thursday.
Can go up /U but once up, can't get back into home base. No approaches into APA that don't require /A or ADF on board. Crud.
Could go up anyway and strand the airplane at BJC, FTG, FNL, or GXY and bring it home this weekend.
Seems kinda stupid though.
Thoughts from the peanut gallery?
- Would you risk stuffing a different DME in that tray? (I'm thinking no.)
- Anyone know a great King repair shop? We've got the alternate W&B so tossing this thing in a FedEx box for a solid going-over isn't a problem. Plus if we decided to resell it, it's going to be worthless broken and barely worth anything repaired, I suspect.
- Had a thought a one point that we like the King Comm radios better than we like the Garmin Comm stuff -- they're rare, but the non-Comm version of the 430W might be out there somewhere. Can't quite figure out if that GPS has the Nav ILS/VOR receiver in it or if that's also stripped out from docs I've been looking at. Still means problems for the intercom wiring though, since we'd then have three Nav heads to Ident.
- Resale values. I've looked up some numbers, but what's realistic for a King KN-62A, and/or a King KX-155 w/o glideslope and non-GPS capable OBS? Probably not a lot, but not zero I'm guessing. (I'll have to look up the OBS model number, but it's one model before the one that added the circuitry to interface with King GPS units.)
Just thinking out loud here. Feel free to join the fun. No reasonable thoughts discarded.