Panel-Mount ICOM A5

When my Narco died a couple of months ago, I decided to try to flush-mount an
ICOM IC-A5 handheld into the panel as a replacement. Here's a picture of the
result:

http://www.wanttaja.com/hhrad2.JPG

The A5 has up-down buttons on the front, and a dial control on the top. The
functions of these can be set by the front buttons...the default is the up-down
buttons for volume, and the top dial for frequency.

Unfortunately, with my flush-mounting, the top dial isn't accessible. I looked
into things like a right-angle drive, but came up with a simpler solution: I
switched the radio function to put the volume control as the dial control, then
set the volume to maximum and added a 10K pot as an 'auxiliary' volume control.
That's the blue-tipped knob to the left of the radio display.

The basic structure is 1.25" square aluminum tube that has one side cut away to
form a channel (my local Metal Supermarket having a much better variety of
square tubing than channel. The radio is lightly clamped between two side
rails, with rubber bumpers on either side of the radio to center it. Two small
pieces of angle aluminum clamp the radio to form-fitting hole in the panel. The
mount itself weighs just five ounces.

http://www.wanttaja.com/hhrad.JPG

A couple of folks on RAH helped me find the right plug for wiring up my own
headset adaptor. Both the volume control and the headset jacks actually install
into the side rails, which give me a almost totally self-contained installation.
Only a four-pin Molex connector is needed to wire it to the airplane...+12V,
ground, and two wires to the PTT switch.

The mount is designed for a "Battery Eliminator" to allow the radio to be
powered by the aircraft bus (and turned off when the master is off). I used the
"poor man's X-Ray" (a careful bit of drilling) to find a spot to run a bolt
through the battery eliminator to attach it to the mount.

This worked fine. However, the electrical wire that normally runs to a
cigarette lighter was extremely difficult to cut back and dig out the wires
inside. The outside shell is very rubbery, and it was tough to cut it back
without some sort of a nick on the wires within. It turned out the wires
themselves are surprisingly thin (about 24 gauge!) and I ended up with an
internal break where the wires entered the case. So for now, I'm running it on
its battery while I await the arrival of a new battery eliminator.

In retrospect, I should have just bought a battery case for AA batteries and
built my own power regulator/converter. I'll use the new battery eliminator,
but will probably access the wires at the cigarette lighter plug and coil up the
excess wire. I'll rig up a support strap to the belt-clip mount and eliminate
the need to drill through the case.

Finally, the question some of you probably have is, 'Why'? Why not just stick
it to the outside of the panel with velcro?

I ran the plane like that for a month, and just absolutely hated the wires
running all over the place. Plus, I was worried about the potential for theft.

Ron Wanttaja