Narco Escort II Static

[jdfrey1]

I have a Narco Escort II Nav/Com in my airplane as my secondary radio and it is very noisy and has a lot of static. I rarely use it except to maybe try to listen to an ATIS but now that I'm starting my IFR training I would like to troubleshoot this issue. Any suggestions on things to check before sending the radio out for repair? Is this a common problem with this radio? Any idea on how much I can expect to pay for a repair?

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[poadeleted20]

Narco has a well-deserved reputation for slow, expensive support of its older radios. It is likely that you will have to get it sent to Narco for repair unless it's something external to the radio itself, like loose wires. If it goes back to Narco, expect to pay several hundred dollars plus shipping, and at least a month of turn-around time unless you pay an extra $100 for "expedited" service.

 

[wsuffa]

To add to what Ron said:

In other words, you're probably better off acquiring a working replacement radio of another breed on EBay. (Note that I have an NCS-812 in my panel that will be replaced by a second Garmin 430 when that Narco goes T.U.)

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Narco has a well-deserved reputation for slow, expensive support of its older radios. It is likely that you will have to get it sent to Narco for repair unless it's something external to the radio itself, like loose wires. If it goes back to Narco, expect to pay several hundred dollars plus shipping, and at least a month of turn-around time unless you pay an extra $100 for "expedited" service.

Ron's either being really generous, or hasn't had to deal with Narco in a while.

Last year, the Narco radio in one of our Archers went on the fritz. We had it pulled and sent in. Narco did not even look at it for eleven months.

If you're having trouble with a Narco radio, the best place to send it to is the closest trash can. Replace it with something that you can get fixed anywhere. King makes a fine radio, even better if it's got the MAC 1700 upgrade or is a newer digital flip-flop. Or, take the opportunity to make your other radio #2 and throw in that Garmin 430 you've been wanting.

Whatever you do, don't waste your time with Narco.

 

[SCCutler]

Y'know, I have heard that stuff about Narco, and yet when I asked the guy from whom I bought the Bo about it (he had had the 12D in the plane serviced a while back), he told me that they were pleasant and quick.

They certainly ain't consistent!

 

[bromschwig]

I have always had pleasent and quick service from Narco in PA. My entire panel is Narco except for the panel mount GPS. Audio is great too.

 

[Ken Ibold]

I looked up "escort service" on Google and it didn't say ANYTHING about Narco products.

 

[Trapper John]

I looked up "escort service" on Google and it didn't say ANYTHING about Narco products.

And if you're looking for a kid to do odd jobs, I strongly suggest that you don't Google "rent boy"!

 

[weirdjim]

I have a Narco Escort II Nav/Com in my airplane

Jeesus Murphy, you've got a 30 year old radio in your airplane and you wonder why it has problems?

Sheesh

 

[Dan Thomas]

We had Narco Mk12D+'s in some airplanes. Junk, all of them. The avionics shop had them apart numerous times and they were back to the factory sometimes, too. The avionics tech told me (and showed me) that no two were alike, that some had extra components soldered atop other stuff, sometimes even small circuit boards, to make them work. That kinda makes the schematics useless. They're all gone now and we sure don't miss them. I wouldn't spend any money on any Narco unless it was a museum piece in an antique airplane, made in an era when Narcos were good radios.

Dan

 

[Tom-D]

I have a Narco Escort II Nav/Com in my airplane as my secondary radio and it is very noisy and has a lot of static. I rarely use it except to maybe try to listen to an ATIS but now that I'm starting my IFR training I would like to troubleshoot this issue. Any suggestions on things to check before sending the radio out for repair? Is this a common problem with this radio? Any idea on how much I can expect to pay for a repair?

Thanks,
Jeff

Find a radio repair station that has been in business a few years and they will have the pubs to repair those old radios. It's only the new radios that Narco didn't issue the pubs to repair, Even the Mark 12 D has pubs in the field. It's just the shops issue if they won't repair Narco equipment.

 

[Tom-D]

We had Narco Mk12D+'s in some airplanes. Junk, all of them. The avionics shop had them apart numerous times and they were back to the factory sometimes, too. The avionics tech told me (and showed me) that no two were alike, that some had extra components soldered atop other stuff, sometimes even small circuit boards, to make them work. That kinda makes the schematics useless. They're all gone now and we sure don't miss them. I wouldn't spend any money on any Narco unless it was a museum piece in an antique airplane, made in an era when Narcos were good radios.

Dan

sounds like a avionics shop issue, I installed a 120-20 in a 170 back in 1990, and it has worked well ever since. Every helo pilot in Alaska is looking for a Narco 120-20 they are the loudenboomer they need. 20 watts of final out put. and you get heard.

 

[Dan Thomas]

sounds like a avionics shop issue, I installed a 120-20 in a 170 back in 1990, and it has worked well ever since. Every helo pilot in Alaska is looking for a Narco 120-20 they are the loudenboomer they need. 20 watts of final out put. and you get heard.

Maybe that was the last of Narco's good stuff? The 12D+ was a real pain, and we had three of them. All went back to the factory at some point but still gave endless trouble. Regardless of what the Narco service manuals had for schematics, the extra stuff found inside them was neither shown or explained.

"Aircraft Quality" has become almost meaningless these days. I find much better stuff under the hoods of cheap cars.

Dan

 

[denverpilot]

sounds like a avionics shop issue, I installed a 120-20 in a 170 back in 1990, and it has worked well ever since. Every helo pilot in Alaska is looking for a Narco 120-20 they are the loudenboomer they need. 20 watts of final output. and you get heard.

5W RF output to 20W RF output is a 6 dB difference in power. Significant at the fringes if a receiver is hearing a signal that's too noisy to copy, it'll clean it up enough that it'll be "tough copy" but maybe more understandable.

(Assuming an idiot behind the mic doesn't start yelling as if that'll help...)

5W to 20W is not that big a power difference. A nice 100W brick amplifier (if they were legal in aviation) would do a lot more for those land-lubber helo pilots.

Of course, log scales being what they are, a 10W to 100W is only a 10dB difference... but a 10dB change in signal is quite a bit more significant at the typical receiver sensitivities seen in AM Aircraft receivers, which sadly, are fairly "deaf" by modern receiver standards. I don't know if the fixed locations the helos are talking to have good gain antennas, low loss feedline, and custom filtering and pre-amplification on their RF input side of things, but that could make a significant difference too.

Ground stations/aircraft that are low (helos) would easily benefit more from using lower loss coax and better gain antennas... but the drag and size aren't do-able... once you're at altitude your radio line-of-sight is so far out, that power isn't nearly as important anymore.

(I've seen some serious CRAP installed in homebuilts... RG-8X mini-foam from Radio Shack with a freakin' 85% shield?!?! Are you kidding me?! Wow. And he had one of those "hidden inside the fiberglass" antennas he'd home-brewed... and wondered why he could hear the Tower, but the tower couldn't hear him. When I asked if he had measured the forward and reflected RF power to that antenna, he gave me a look that read... "I have no idea what you're talking about.")

 

[weirdjim]

A nice 100W brick amplifier (if they were legal in aviation) would do a lot more for those land-lubber helo pilots.

2-meter bricks are readily tunable to the aircraft band and most of them are SSB (i.e. linear) capable.

The theoretical range of a 1 watt transmitter and a 1 microvolt receiver using standard whip antennas is something on the order of 1500 miles. Altitude and a good installation are everything; power means little to nothing.

"Hidden inside the fiberglass" antennas that are properly installed are every bit the equal of any other airborne antenna. We've got roughly 5,000-10,000 of them working quite well.

Jim

 

[denverpilot]

Not legal anyway, as I said.

But your "theoretical" radio horizon only works in space, and even then you're about a full order if magnitude off for usable signal strength. A detectable AM signal where the modulation is not copyable in a voice network is relatively useless. The curvature of the Earth means that the radio horizon for a transmitter at VHF that's 1000' AGL is only about 140 miles. And that'd be a CW/Morse Code contact.

Voice distance would be about 2/3s of that, maybe. From experience using numerous 100W stations at distances of 100+ miles, you usually need ionospheric bouncing or tropospheric bending to go beyond 100 miles at VHF, and "easy copy" of AM or FM signals is really only going to be about 50-75 miles from 1000' AGL with zero other RF blockage between the antennas. (Using that since we're talking helicopters here."

"Free space" theory numbers are good mostly only at seeing how close you can get to them, not good for RF communications network design at all.

Another real-world thing that applies well here, since most FAA transmitters are in that same 20W range, if they're noisy -- you'll be equally noisy to them. In a normally equipped aircraft if your power level is 3dB lower than theirs, expect a human to hear what they would describe as "double" the perceived noise at their end. 6 dB can really make a difference at the receiver's fringes.

This leaves out multipath (reflections off the surrounding environment, buildings, mountains, etc.) and interference or receiver "overload" from adjacent frequency use. Not to mention other non-malicious interference sources.

I chucked a Linksys router in the garbage that was spurious all over VHF and UHF. Thousands of those out there.

My best 2 meter (VHF) contact was a double-tropospheric-duct hop from Limon, CO to the panhandle of Florida utilizing 150W SSB and a 15 element non-computer optimized Yagi antenna boresighted on a line of thunderstorms between here and there. "Armchair copy" for about ten minutes. Then it was gone.

Best non-tropo so far has been far southwest Nebraska to Denver on a 10 element log periodic built for 2m thru 2GHz, and repeated the Pre iOS year on a 6-element non-optimized Yagi. Also 150W SSB, probably 120W on voice peaks, really.

The really cool one was a hop of about that distance from Near Ft. Lupton to Colorado Springs on 10 GHz SSB, but that one we both had to point at Pikes Peak, and use it as a crude reflector! ;-)

Both years of those mobile contacts, I took the top score for Rocky Mtn Region in the ARRL June VHF and above contest, 2006 and 2007 in the "Unlimited Rover" category.

I've got nothing on the two guys who've worked all Colorado grid squares from one single point near Boulder, CO -- even over the mountains -- on 10 GHz utilizing airliners for "airplane scatter" propagation though. That's incredible.

Also can't hold a candle to Brian Justin WA1ZMS who holds most of the world's distance records on the microwave bands. He joked on the phone once that he had to skip one of the 200 GHz bands because the signal was going to be at the resonant frequency of Oxygen and it'd just be absorbed and turned into heat in the air in front of the antenna.

Applied RF physics is way cooler than reading it from a textbook!

 

[weirdjim]

Not legal anyway, as I said.

Didn't say legal, just how it has been done for several dozen base stations that I know about

But your "theoretical" radio horizon only works in space, and even then you're about a full order if magnitude off for usable signal strength. A detectable AM signal where the modulation is not copyable in a voice network is relatively useless. The curvature of the Earth means that the radio horizon for a transmitter at VHF that's 1000' AGL is only about 140 miles. And that'd be a CW/Morse Code contact.

There is no radio horizon in space, just free space loss. No I'm NOT an order of magnitude off; a 1 microvolt AM signal is quite readable with even an average noise figure.

Do your math again. Radio horizon in miles is equal to the square root of 2*h, where h is the altitude of the aircraft in feet. Radio horizon at 1000' is about 45 miles.

Voice distance would be about 2/3s of that, maybe. From experience using numerous 100W stations at distances of 100+ miles, you usually need ionospheric bouncing or tropospheric bending to go beyond 100 miles at VHF, and "easy copy" of AM or FM signals is really only going to be about 50-75 miles from 1000' AGL with zero other RF blockage between the antennas. (Using that since we're talking helicopters here."

Again I iterate -- power means nothing. And you won't hear a damned thing at 75 miles from 1000' AGL with ANY kind of power. Voice distance is not a factor in horizon...you can see it or you can't.

"Free space" theory numbers are good mostly only at seeing how close you can get to them, not good for RF communications network design at all.

Sonny, I've been designing RF links for well over 50 years, probably before you were born. Would you teach your grandmother how to suck eggs?

Another real-world thing that applies well here, since most FAA transmitters are in that same 20W range, if they're noisy -- you'll be equally noisy to them. In a normally equipped aircraft if your power level is 3dB lower than theirs, expect a human to hear what they would describe as "double" the perceived noise at their end. 6 dB can really make a difference at the receiver's fringes.

FAA transmitters are 50 watts, not 20 watts. Push-pull 829B output stages in the old stuff, lord knows what in the new stuff.

10 dB is what a human perceives as double loudness, not 3 dB. See the Fletcher-Munson research and papers.

I chucked a Linksys router in the garbage that was spurious all over VHF and UHF. Thousands of those out there.

And your point is?

My best 2 meter (VHF) contact was a double-tropospheric-duct hop from Limon, CO to the panhandle of Florida utilizing 150W SSB and a 15 element non-computer optimized Yagi antenna boresighted on a line of thunderstorms between here and there. "Armchair copy" for about ten minutes. Then it was gone.

Somewhere in my dusty archives is a 2 meter AM QSL card between me in San Diego (at the time) and Hawaii during one hell of a solar burst back in the '50s.

Applied RF physics is way cooler than reading it from a textbook!

My degree is in Physics and I teach it daily at the college level. None of my kids gets out of my class without at least making and completely characterizing a 3-element 2 meter yagi.

Look at the N number on the 182.

jw

.....

 

[denverpilot]

We're both mixing things up here... I re-read what I posted while stuffing lunch in my face and it was mental. Hah.

The original scenario was helicopters talking to an unknown, but assumably ground level station, installing 20W transmitters. Probably from 500' AGL, but I gave them 1000' AGL in my discussion.

You replied with "The theoretical range of a 1 watt transmitter and a 1 microvolt receiver using standard whip antennas is something on the order of 1500 miles. Altitude and a good installation are everything; power means little to nothing."

The helicopters we were discussing don't have any significant altitude. They're trying to make up for it with power, which I think we were both pointing out -- doesn't work. Not well, anyway.

So I replied (with a bunch of jumbled thoughts) saying that you were incorrect because I was assuming you were staying with the OP's scenario.

Re-reading what you said, you were correct, but it had nothing at all to do with the real-world scenario presented.

(And neither did most of my reply, which apparently was mostly to say "Hey, I've done this stuff... you aren't going to ever get 1500 miles from a helicopter at 1000' AGL!" And then additionally, "20W isn't that big of a power difference.")

So we kinda violently agree just in different ways, Jim. Me from the "that doesn't work" practical standpoint, you from the "The theory says if you get higher, you're great."

Anyway, I had no idea the FAA was using 50W. I'd seen some licenses for them in the past that said 20W, so I assumed they all were 20W. Bad assumption. Seems kinda ridiculous that they built such a lop-sided system. If they can hear me at 5W, I can hear them at 5W... unless someone's receiver is really broken.

Recently I reported an RCO that needed to be NOTAM'd out of service to LockMart after landing. It was obviously only putting out exciter power, since I was looking at it at a slant range of about 3000' and the LockMart guy remotely talking to me through it was noisy and almost uncopyable.

They said they'd need at least two more reports before they'd dispatch a technician. Stupid. I was tempted to call up two buddies with other tail numbers and ask them to call 800-WX-BRIEF and make two more reports that night, and the next day.

Don't they invest in remote power monitoring on that stuff? Especially on top of mountains that are snowed in and require a snow-cat to get to for 6 months out of a year?

Nice tail number, BTW. Do you really think the California to Hawaii hop was ionospheric? Most of those are tropo... happens with more regularity than most folks think, along that path... lots of those logged.

At least you have some real-world to go with the Physics. I've worked on a couple of RF systems designed by engineers who'd never keyed a mic, and had done all the "math" only... and they didn't work well, mostly due to multipath effects and other problems in FM systems that weren't accounted for.

My favorite was the "deaf" high-mountain system overlooking the city. The engineer always took a "It's not making book numbers, so let's figure out why" approach, which never got the system up to what similar systems on the same tower did easily, and he could have copied from. "What worked" on the already tried-and-true systems sitting in the cabinet right next to his, didn't matter... he was an ENGINEER! (LOL!)

He was convinced he was smarter than the previous six engineers that had worked on the same systems up there, I guess. It was a shared TX/RX antenna system, split antennas, between four systems.

It was fun to watch him squirm when another system on the same tower and identical antenna system out-performed his significantly. What he didn't know, was that the site noise floor was atrocious, and he never measured it.

He just pre-amplified the snot out of his UHF receiver and shoved it's receiver down well into the noise floor where it was overloaded with out of band noise, and was generally quite unhappy.

Once we showed him how to do a receiver usable-sensitivity test, injecting a test signal at an iso-T with the real-world antenna connected, the light bulb started to come on. Ripping the pre-amp out actually helped, as did building the correct bandpass filtering on the receiver, even with the inherent losses involved in adding the cavities. A much weaker pre-amp after that nicely filtered input, and ... hey... look at that... you've built exactly what was in this cabinet over here next to yours! (ROFL!)

They don't cover massive broad undefined noise floors in the visible RF horizon, in most textbooks. And most cities are becoming exactly that... massive undefinable noise floors.

Thus... (Yes, this is leading somewhere...)... my comment about the Linksys!

Tons of those cheap pieces of crap out there, and some percentage of those thousands probably all failed in the same way mine did... making noise all over the place.

Unless someone is a weak-signal guy in the neighborhood, no one cares... but they all add to the combined noise floor in populated areas.

Is the rambling starting to make any sense now? Ahh, maybe not. This reply is too long. Oh well.

Fun stuff.

As far as other aviation radio related topics go -- I wonder how many aviation antennas when swept really present a reasonable response across the entire aviation band. Ever done that on any installations you've seen? I haven't, mostly out of abject fear that some FAA wonk might find out an "unauthorized" schmuck like me actually disconnected an antenna cable and then reconnected it. My God man... the world might come to an end, you know?

That installation I saw in that homebuilt was probably losing half the usable signal coming in, and going out, it was probably all turning to heat in the coax. The new-ish Icom radio was probably folding back to protect itself, too.

The guy's test-method was to have his buddy drive away from the airport with a handheld and see where he could hear him and talk to him. No plan for where he would go (behind a hill, top of a hill, straight behind the hangar row, or out in the clear... where?) and how far away (just drive until you can't hear me anymore), and they had no idea how to check his real-world tests against any theory/math.

It was about as useless a test as I've ever witnessed.

I offered to at least check the power output of his radio (not knowing if I was allowed to do that, but hey... he had at least *TWO* BNC barrel connectors in that antenna setup between the rig and the homebrew antenna in the tail -- so it's not like plugging my IFR 1500 in-line would have been difficult or even detectable by anyone later anyway -- but he only called on the phone once and never called back when I couldn't come over to the airport mid-day on a Tuesday...

(When you retire, do you suddenly forget that the rest of the world has day jobs? LOL!)

If I see him at his hangar again, I'll ask how his radio problems are going. Trying to be neighborly and all... but $100-$200 at an avionics shop and they'd rip out that Rat Shack coax and all those extra/unnecessary BNC connectors, put a real antenna in the tail, and he'd be golden...

He said he'd learned everything he needed to know about installing his Comm radios from an Internet builders forum for his homebuilt.

 

[denverpilot]

10 dB is what a human perceives as double loudness, not 3 dB. See the Fletcher-Munson research and papers.

Oh, I forgot that one...

"Double loudness" in dB in audio waves... yes.

Not in RF systems. The receivers aren't linear. You're mixing analog audio "dB" with how RF receivers react.

One's describing our ears (a different sort of receiver), the other is describing how radio receivers detect and the present those signals to our same old venerable ears.

In a modern receiver, once you fall off the face of the cliff at the low end, 3dB can easily be the difference between "copyable" and "uncopyable" -- depending on where you are on the curve.

It's a curve that is pretty flat until the bottom, then drops off like a roller coaster.

You knew that though... Why'd you apply it to audio when we're talkin' about RF?

 

[weirdjim]

Nice tail number, BTW. Do you really think the California to Hawaii hop was ionospheric? Most of those are tropo... happens with more regularity than most folks think, along that path... lots of those logged.

I'd bet ionospheric. We had taxicabs from New York screwing up channel 7 and ambulances from Texas coming in 20 over 9 on the local meatwagon frequency.

At least you have some real-world to go with the Physics. I've worked on a couple of RF systems designed by engineers who'd never keyed a mic, and had done all the "math" only... and they didn't work well, mostly due to multipath effects and other problems in FM systems that weren't accounted for.

I stopped doing the math a long time ago after it led me down some primrose paths that I knew in my gut "just ain't right". I'll do a quick and dirty first cut with nothing more than high school algebra just to convince myself that I'm in the ballpark, but from there it is hammer, file, kick in the edges, weld it shut, and paint to match.

He just pre-amplified the snot out of his UHF receiver and shoved it's receiver down well into the noise floor where it was overloaded with out of band noise, and was generally quite unhappy.

Front end gain has nailed more than one textbook designer that doesn't understand the various "mods" (crossmod, intermod, etc.).

As far as other aviation radio related topics go -- I wonder how many aviation antennas when swept really present a reasonable response across the entire aviation band. Ever done that on any installations you've seen?

Yeah, back in the '70s Bellanca hired me to put all their antennas into their wood wings and such. I used thickwall brass tubing for the elements and swept nav, com, marker, and glideslope as installed. That was way before I came to the epiphany that copper tape on a balsawood wooden dowel was a tenth the weight and every bit as good as the brass.

That installation I saw in that homebuilt was probably losing half the usable signal coming in, and going out, it was probably all turning to heat in the coax. The new-ish Icom radio was probably folding back to protect itself, too.

Probably so. It never ceases to amaze me that people will spend many hundreds of dollars on the electronics and pinch pennies on the antenna system.

The guy's test-method was to have his buddy drive away from the airport with a handheld and see where he could hear him and talk to him. No plan for where he would go (behind a hill, top of a hill, straight behind the hangar row, or out in the clear... where?) and how far away (just drive until you can't hear me anymore), and they had no idea how to check his real-world tests against any theory/math.

And, of course, not taking into account the fact that his airplane antenna wasn't even a wavelength above the surface of the earth.


If I see him at his hangar again, I'll ask how his radio problems are going. Trying to be neighborly and all... but $100-$200 at an avionics shop and they'd rip out that Rat Shack coax and all those extra/unnecessary BNC connectors, put a real antenna in the tail, and he'd be golden...

Well...a BNC barrel isn't but three connectors (the barrel and the two connectors on either end) and I doubt he'd be losing more than a couple of tenths of a dB per barrel assembly at VHF, but the coax is certainly a problem, not to mention the RF section of the radio doing a VSWR shutdown.

jw

.....

 

[weirdjim]

In a modern receiver, once you fall off the face of the cliff at the low end, 3dB can easily be the difference between "copyable" and "uncopyable" -- depending on where you are on the curve.

No argument. When you are just riding on the tips of the grass, 3 dB less puts you way into the lawn.

Jim

 

[Tom-D]

Does this make any sense to anyone but the two tweets writing?

The old Narco 120s were good old radios, but for less than 1k you can replace it with a VALCOM 2000C, which weighs less than 3 pounds. is 1 inch thick 7.25 wide and 9 inches long. plus it has 200 memory channels, easy to read numbers.
http://www.valavionics.com/productPages/comms/commRadios.htm#2000

 

[denverpilot]

For a couple hundred bucks more, the Icom IC-A210 is a much more feature packed radio.

Better receiver, better audio amp, built in intercom for airplanes that don't have one or would like a single-box solution, instant 121.5 access, "stacked" memories, OLED display, NOAA weather (ahem... "All Hazards") radio, meets a pile of MIL-specs, dual-watch monitoring of two frequencies in receive mode simultaneously so no need for a second Comm or leaving the frequency to pick up ATIS in a single radio aircraft, etc. Nice rig.

http://www.theaviationwarehouse.com/ICOM-IC-A210-VHF-Air-Band-Com-Transceiver-IC-A21021.htm

My favorite feature, the thing has a time-out timer for the inevitable day when you have a "stuck mic". Something every other commercial and Amateur rig has had for at least a decade, some for three decades.

Honestly though, the used Comm radio market is pretty flooded with inexpensive deals with all the folks ripping out working gear to make room for Garmin 430s. Buying new hardly seems worth it. Most avionics shops have piles of Comm radios on the back room shelves that they took in on "trade-in" that they're happy to sell, install, and sometimes even give a "warranty" on -- they'll just grab another one from the shelf if the first one dies in 30 days or whatever you negotiate -- for a lot cheaper than new.

My King Silver Crown stack is a tank/workhorse and we won't be pulling those any time soon, but I'd really like to give one of these new Icom rigs a try in flight and see how they stack up. Specs look great. Wish the previous owner had put a King KR-87 on board when he did the other King stuff and the PS audio panel.

https://commerce.honeywell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10101&catalogId=10052&langId=-1&categoryId=10511&cursel=item1&searchStr=kr-87

The odd-ball in our panel now that the ADF is dead/gone is the Cessna Mode C transponder. It'll probably die eventually. Haven't really priced or shopped Mode S stuff yet.

 

[Tom-D]

For a couple hundred bucks more, the Icom IC-A210 is a much more feature packed radio.

Better receiver, better audio amp, built in intercom for airplanes that don't have one or would like a single-box solution, instant 121.5 access, "stacked" memories, OLED display, NOAA weather (ahem... "All Hazards") radio, meets a pile of MIL-specs, dual-watch monitoring of two frequencies in receive mode simultaneously so no need for a second Comm or leaving the frequency to pick up ATIS in a single radio aircraft, etc. Nice rig.

http://www.theaviationwarehouse.com/ICOM-IC-A210-VHF-Air-Band-Com-Transceiver-IC-A21021.htm

My favorite feature, the thing has a time-out timer for the inevitable day when you have a "stuck mic". Something every other commercial and Amateur rig has had for at least a decade, some for three decades.

Honestly though, the used Comm radio market is pretty flooded with inexpensive deals with all the folks ripping out working gear to make room for Garmin 430s. Buying new hardly seems worth it. Most avionics shops have piles of Comm radios on the back room shelves that they took in on "trade-in" that they're happy to sell, install, and sometimes even give a "warranty" on -- they'll just grab another one from the shelf if the first one dies in 30 days or whatever you negotiate -- for a lot cheaper than new.

My King Silver Crown stack is a tank/workhorse and we won't be pulling those any time soon, but I'd really like to give one of these new Icom rigs a try in flight and see how they stack up. Specs look great. Wish the previous owner had put a King KR-87 on board when he did the other King stuff and the PS audio panel.

https://commerce.honeywell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10101&catalogId=10052&langId=-1&categoryId=10511&cursel=item1&searchStr=kr-87

The odd-ball in our panel now that the ADF is dead/gone is the Cessna Mode C transponder. It'll probably die eventually. Haven't really priced or shopped Mode S stuff yet.

The A210 is a great radio, if you don't have an IC, but the cost comparison, the VAL is cheaper and takes less space.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Buncha radio stuff

Bunch more radio stuff

I'm not sure which one of you to believe. Who has a college degree?

 

[flyingcheesehead]

For a couple hundred bucks more, the Icom IC-A210 is a much more feature packed radio.

Better receiver, better audio amp, built in intercom for airplanes that don't have one or would like a single-box solution, instant 121.5 access, "stacked" memories, OLED display, NOAA weather (ahem... "All Hazards") radio, meets a pile of MIL-specs, dual-watch monitoring of two frequencies in receive mode simultaneously so no need for a second Comm or leaving the frequency to pick up ATIS in a single radio aircraft, etc. Nice rig.

http://www.theaviationwarehouse.com/ICOM-IC-A210-VHF-Air-Band-Com-Transceiver-IC-A21021.htm

Wow. It's too bad they don't make a Nav/Com version of that - The A210 looks like it's right on par with the Garmin SL40 that runs about $550 more. If they could do a radio that was on par with the SL30 Nav/COM, and the percentage was the same, it'd run about $2500 and change instead of Garmin's $3700 SL30.

 

[weirdjim]

I'm not sure which one of you to believe. Who has a college degree?

Dunno about the other guy.

Broke my first FAR at 16 fixing aircraft radios in my garage in return for flight hours in a Piper milkstool.

Worked my way through San Diego State (BS Electronic Physics, Math, 1967) doing avionics (legally) for Pacific Southwest Airlines.

Founded RST Engineering, avionics in kit form, 1973. Still going.

Went back for an MS in EE to Sacramento State. Got halfway through and got bored as snot with out of date faculty.

Did a few interesting things before I founded RST Engineering like work on the Apollo landing radar, NASA phased array antennas, and Bellanca hidden antennas.

Currently teaching Electronic Technology at the local community college part time just for the fun of it.

It has been a really good ride, so far.

jw

 

[denverpilot]

Kent wasn't serious. He's poking at me from another thread discussion about the value of college degrees. But yep, Jim's got me way beat on both formal education and broader experience. Plus my living is wireline, but my passion/fun is wireless. I'm the "learned it by hard knocks and lots of questions" guy. I've built a few FM repeater systems, fixed/maintained others, and hung my neck out in a number of Amateur contests for a score, and come up on top of the heap a few times Couldn't have done it without a lot of help from friends, that's for sure!

But... I got the knowledge free/cheap! I always contend to someone who says they need a degree to DO something, that they don't. Libraries are great. Experts like talking about the things they're passionate about and know best over coffee. If you want to get *hired* to do something, Jim's path wins.

Unless... Someone's willing to take a risk on you. Right now, risk is out of vogue. But the market sometimes helps. I'm a LOT cheaper than Jim.

Some of the best product development and support teams I've ever worked on were populated with a mix of formally trained people and informal "school of hard knocks" people who trusted each other. Good companies do this. The formal folk can design, the hard-knocks folk have an innate ability to recognize "over-engineering" since they didn't have time for it when under the gun, and mixing the two can be really powerful.

Troubleshooting skill in both is fascinating too. The formal engineer can show you the math of why something won't work, the hard-knocks guy or gal can also tell you it won't, but they might have a hard time explaining it to certain folks. But they can often relate it as an analogy that's spot on.

An engineer can build and show you an antenna pattern plot and the math behind it. The hard knocks guy can explain antenna gain as "It's just like when you shine a maglight at a wall and then focus the beam. The same amount of light is coming out of the bulb, but in that one focal point on the wall the light is brighter. A receiver in that spot can 'see' the flashlight better as you 'add gain' and remove the spreading. Focus your limited RF waves -- just light the light waves -- where you want it to be heard!"

The experience is just -- different. Not really generally "better" or "worse". My fear right now is that we're not valuing the "hard knocks" folks enough nor do we have a taste for the risks they take in the general population. Pilots tend to "get" calculated risk better than the general populace. Luckily some folks many years ago saw some value in my untrained butt, or I wouldn't have the job I have today. They were floored when I had a Real-Time Operating System on my resume' for example. (It was Microware OS/9 if anyone cares.) One engineer I'm still great friends with today asked, "Why would you run an RTOS at home?!" The answer was, "I don't know. Because I could? And I can see some fascinating uses for such a thing, do you use it here?"

Telecom/Embedded systems I later learned, back then, almost always used an RTOS because CPU horsepower was expensive and there weren't enough clock cycles to go around when 400 phone lines dialed in at once.

That engineer and I learned a lot from each other. He taught me that code could be clean and readable, I taught him to stop trusting the network because IP networks break all the time.

Jim probably knew what he'd expect to see on RF test gear before he fired it up on the workbench. I had to buy RF test gear and "fly" it on the workbench to really understand what the chart was telling me about dB and RF power levels.

This is one of the core reasons I love aviation. There's both "book learning'" to be done and experiencial things you just have to DO to really "get it". Like your glide tests, Kent. The book says this airplane's glide ratio is X:Y but you can also go out and test it yourself. I just absolutely LOVE that kind of dual-approach learning.

An EE student who hasn't built a circuit they didn't understand at all, just hasn't lived! Letting the smoke out of perfectly innocent electronic parts is all part of the learning process. You learn the difference between the part's book rating, and what kind of abuse it can handle when you "color outside the lines" a bit.

For that same reason, I just can't fathom how we don't teach spins anymore as a flight basic. A spin is a perfectly natural state for a fixed-wing aircraft, but we terrify people of them and don't let them see behind the curtain of Oz. They have to actively seek out "upset" training as if the airplane cares? That's awful! The only thing "upset" in a spinning airplane is the pilot. The airplane's doing exactly what it naturally does when stalled and cross-controlled. Or to paraphrase one of my CFIs... "The airplane doesn't know it's spinning."

You got me going again Kent! Heh. Always fun to see what other folks think about these ideas. More virtual beer, barkeep! More hangar flying!

 

[jesse]

For that same reason, I just can't fathom how we don't teach spins anymore as a flight basic. A spin is a perfectly natural state for a fixed-wing aircraft, but we terrify people of them and don't let them see behind the curtain of Oz. They have to actively seek out "upset" training as if the airplane cares? That's awful! The only thing "upset" in a spinning airplane is the pilot. The airplane's doing exactly what it naturally does when stalled and cross-controlled. Or to paraphrase one of my CFIs... "The airplane doesn't know it's spinning."

I love doing spins - but I don't see a lot of value in teaching them during the private pilot training. For one it's hard to get an airplane that you could do it in and for two if the pilot gets themselves into that spin they probably did it down low and they're already dead. Recognition is what really has to be taught and understood.

I would teach a student spins if they requested and I could figure out a legal way to do it. But without parachutes, my hands are legally tied.

 

[Tom-D]

I love doing spins - but I don't see a lot of value in teaching them during the private pilot training. For one it's hard to get an airplane that you could do it in and for two if the pilot gets themselves into that spin they probably did it down low and they're already dead. Recognition is what really has to be taught and understood.

I would teach a student spins if they requested and I could figure out a legal way to do it. But without parachutes, my hands are legally tied.

Knowing that spins/stalls are normal flight in a C-150/172 why can't you do spins in them with out chuts?

If it's illegal why did we get AD 2009-10-09

91.303

For the purposes of this section, aerobatic flight means an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft's attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight.

 

[jesse]

Knowing that spins/stalls are normal flight in a C-150/172 why can't you do spins in them with out chuts?

The parachute regulation has nothing to do with "normal flight". It applies to banks greater than 60 degrees or nose-up/nose-down attitudes greater than 30 degrees.

If it's illegal why did we get AD 2009-10-09

I fail to see how an airworthiness directive effects parachute usage.

91.303

For the purposes of this section, aerobatic flight means an intentional maneuver involving an abrupt change in an aircraft's attitude, an abnormal attitude, or abnormal acceleration, not necessary for normal flight.

That part has nothing to do with the parachute requirement which is 91.307(c) which reads:

Unless each occupant of the aircraft is wearing an approved parachute, no pilot of a civil aircraft carrying any person (other than a crew-member) may execute any intentional maneuver that exceeds:
(1)A bank of 60 degrees relative to the horizon; or
(2)a Nose-up or nose-down attitude of 30 degrees relative to the horizon

(d) Paragraph (c) of this section does not apply to---
(1) Flight tests for pilot certification or rating; or
(2) Spins and other flight maneuvers required by the regulations for any certificate or rating when given by---
(i) A certificated flight instructor; or
(ii)An airline transport pilot instructing in accorance with 61.67 of this chapter

Based on that I could do it if I were an instructor (which I am) and it were towards a certificate or rating which were required by the regulations. To me this reads as if I could only do it if it were towards CFI training. This is how I've heard a lot of people interpret it.

All of that said I decided to do some more digging and went searching through advisory circulars.

AC61-67C says:

b. Because spin entry, spins, and spin recovery are required for a flight instructor certificate or rating, a person receiving instruction from a CFI (or an ATP instructing in accordance with section 61.167) need not wear an approved parachute while instruction is being provided in these maneuvers. This provision applies regardless of the certificate or rating for which the person is receiving training and also if the person is receiving instruction that is not being provided for the purpose of obtaining any additional certificate or rating. The instructor providing the training is also not required to wear an approved parachute while providing this flight training.

That seems to make it clear that I can give spin training without parachutes to a pilot of any certificate level. Most excellent.

All of that said you cannot take a passenger up for spins unless you have parachutes or you're a CFI. You can do it solo without the parachute.

 

[Tom-D]

The parachute regulation has nothing to do with "normal flight". It applies to banks greater than 60 degrees or nose-up/nose-down attitudes greater than 30 degrees.

normal flight in a C-150, includes spins and spins. no chuts required for normal flight. just acro.


I fail to see how an airworthiness directive effects parachute usage.

If spins and stalls were not normal flight for the aircraft why would the FAA issue that AD for a no spins unless compliance with the AD is met?

there is a correlation. when you read the AD.


That part has nothing to do with the parachute requirement which is 91.307(c) which reads:
Based on that I could do it if I were an instructor (which I am) and it were towards a certificate or rating which were required by the regulations. To me this reads as if I could only do it if it were towards CFI training. This is how I've heard a lot of people interpret it.

All of that said I decided to do some more digging and went searching through advisory circulars.

AC61-67C says:
That seems to make it clear that I can give spin training without parachutes to a pilot of any certificate level. Most excellent.

All of that said you cannot take a passenger up for spins unless you have parachutes or you're a CFI. You can do it solo without the parachute.

I believe you read too much into the reg. One has to do with acro, and the other has to do with training to a higher rating. neither has to do with a PPL and PAX doing normal flight IAW the POH.

 

[jesse]

I believe you read too much into the reg. One has to do with acro, and the other has to do with training to a higher rating. neither has to do with a PPL and PAX doing normal flight IAW the POH.

Tom spins is not normal flight in regards to the parachute rule. The parachulte rule is based on 60 degrees of bank or 30 degress of pitch. Period. I think you read part 91 incorrectly.

A private pilot cannot take a passenger up in a Cessna 150 and do spins without a parachute. It's not legal. It's clear as day in the regulations.

BTW. Cessna does not refer to spins being "normal flight" in the POH, they refer to it as an approved aerobatic maneuver, and even if they did it would not matter because the POH is not Part 91.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Some of the best product development and support teams I've ever worked on were populated with a mix of formally trained people and informal "school of hard knocks" people who trusted each other. Good companies do this. The formal folk can design, the hard-knocks folk have an innate ability to recognize "over-engineering" since they didn't have time for it when under the gun, and mixing the two can be really powerful.

A-freakin'-men. A lot of truck drivers talk about what idiots college-educated folks are sometimes, and it's because, well, y'know that saying about those who manage what they do not understand...

Getting both the understanders and the managers together, and getting them to understand each others' side of the equation can be a great thing. It happens all too infrequently in real life, though, generally because those who don't understand (the managers) don't realize that they don't understand. (That said, those who "understand" also often don't understand the management side of the equation.)

They were floored when I had a Real-Time Operating System on my resume' for example. (It was Microware OS/9 if anyone cares.) One engineer I'm still great friends with today asked, "Why would you run an RTOS at home?!" The answer was, "I don't know. Because I could? And I can see some fascinating uses for such a thing, do you use it here?"

LOL - I had never heard of RTOS before my Signals and Systems class on Tuesday.

This is one of the core reasons I love aviation. There's both "book learning'" to be done and experiencial things you just have to DO to really "get it". Like your glide tests, Kent. The book says this airplane's glide ratio is X:Y but you can also go out and test it yourself. I just absolutely LOVE that kind of dual-approach learning.

Definitely. While I like "the book" a lot, and I tick off certain people when I compare book numbers, when my butt's in the seat I want to know what THIS airplane will do. Having all that data-logging capability in the G1000 really gets my geek juices flowing.

An EE student who hasn't built a circuit they didn't understand at all, just hasn't lived! Letting the smoke out of perfectly innocent electronic parts is all part of the learning process. You learn the difference between the part's book rating, and what kind of abuse it can handle when you "color outside the lines" a bit.

Or when you color way outside the book - Or not even in the library at all. I've let the magic smoke out of some things, but resistors shake at the sight of me, because maybe I stayed up last night working robustness equations, or maybe I was drinking, or maybe I was on PoA. "Color outside the book" on a resistor's power level and it turns into a good approximation of a candle. "Color outside the library," that is, get a poor unsuspecting 1/4 watt resistor to dissipate 150 watts (which happens for a VERY short period of time ) and it fails quite spectacularly - POP and all you have left is a pair of leads sticking out of the breadboard. Oops.