The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: AirGizmo PIREP, PS Engineering CD/Intercom woes, XM "service"

I have a 340 and a 396. It all works very well except that I do wish I
could switch the music to 'everyone else' when I go into pilot isolation
mode. It would be nice to keep the music going for my often sleeping
passenger when I need isolation for an IFR procedure or something. Or
when I have yammering passengers and I just need to slip away while they
yap-on with music in the background.

A nit but a nice to have for sure.

BTW, the 396/496 mounts very nicely in the Maule with one of those
gimbaled mounts. The cable lengths work great with the cigar lighter
and all. The XM attenna magnet is perfect for overhead attach
underneath the headliner. Took awhile to figure it out but love it now.

Jay Honeck wrote:
When I had my panel installed, I decided I didn't really need the
flexibility for two separate music sources for the front and back seats, so
just had the two inputs wired together, and connected to an input jack on
the panel. I can just plug in the iPod or CD player and it's available to
all 4 positions with no external switching required.

That's one solution we talked about, but I would hate to lose that
flexibility.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article ,
Bob Noel wrote:

Not once did I have to go back and get something tweaked.

Oh, boy, Bob, have you gone and done it now! You have not just
tempted the avionics gods, you have BAITED them.

nah, you've been the magnet for the bad juju

aw heck, I done got bit by the avionics gods, sort of. The avionics
shop that I've been using since 1994 (the one that I never had
compliants with) was sold sometime around September, and was
suddenly closed 4 December.

Now KBED (Bedford, MA) is without any avionics shop on the
field. (Gee, is it possible that Massport skimming off a percentage
of the gross receipts had anything to do with it?)

Anyway, Jay, you were right. I tempted the gods.

(-{

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

Anyway, Jay, you were right. I tempted the gods.

Ah, well -- it never ends.

We're flying back from Janesville, after a nice lunch with Jim Burns,
grooving to the XM tunes, when I go to dial in the Iowa City AWOS on
COM 2 -- and the little digits dial does nothing. It just spins,
moving the numbers to the right of the decimal point, but without
changing frequencies.

Some little gear inside, no doubt, has stripped, or broken, or fell
out. And I just sold my other Narco Com 120, after upgrading to an
810+R digital com...

:-(
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 11 Dec 2006 20:53:10 -0800, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

Anyway, Jay, you were right. I tempted the gods.

Ah, well -- it never ends.

We're flying back from Janesville, after a nice lunch with Jim Burns,
grooving to the XM tunes, when I go to dial in the Iowa City AWOS on
COM 2 -- and the little digits dial does nothing. It just spins,
moving the numbers to the right of the decimal point, but without
changing frequencies.

Some little gear inside, no doubt, has stripped, or broken, or fell
out.

Jay, you know better than to even hope for that. They quit using
mechanical switches. It probably is a small and very expensive
electronic replacement for a switch.

And I just sold my other Narco Com 120, after upgrading to an
810+R digital com...

:-(
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Jay, you know better than to even hope for that. They quit using
mechanical switches. It probably is a small and very expensive
electronic replacement for a switch.

Actually, a friend of mine had the identical thing happen to his radio.
So this guy took his radio apart yesterday, figuring "What do I have
to lose?" -- and found a cracked 25-cent plastic gear. It was cracked
cleanly down to the shaft, in a nice, straight line.

Whenever that part of the gear mated with the tuning shaft's gear, the
shaft would slip, as the broken gear "flexed" away from the other gear.
This rendered the small frequencies (the ".075" part) unchangeable.

Of course, for an avionics shop to get at that gear would require
dismantling dozens of other little gears, gizmos, and what-nots, to the
tune of several hundred dollars in labor. Since the radio itself (an
old, out-of-production, Com-only Narco 120) was worth MAYBE $200, my
friend sat down with an A&P friend, and postulated a fix.

First, he discovered that he could tune the radio by pressing the
broken gear up against the shaft gear with a screw driver while turning
the knob. With trial and error he re-aligned the frequency in the
window to be accurate, by tuning it to his local AWOS frequency.

Then, he set the radio on end, so that the broken gear was horizontal.
By carefully placing a piece of scotch tape on the bottom of the broken
gear, he created a "plate" for glue to build up against. He then VERY
carefully packed JB Weld into the tiny break in the gear, filling the
space down to the scotch tape, and being careful not to "fill in" any
gear teeth.

JB Weld completely dries in 15 minutes, so after 12 minutes it has set
up firmly, whereupon he carefully removed the scotch tape. He then
carefully "packed" the stuff down so that any excess wouldn't interfere
with the gear teeth.

He reassembled the radio, slid it back into the panel -- and left it to
dry. JB Weld reaches maximum strength in 24 hours, so by now it should
be as good as new.

This might buy the guy a few weeks, or it may last forever. Since his
radio is used as Com 2, primarily to listen to AWOS and/or ground
control, he doesn't use it much -- and now he'll be tuning those small
numbers VERY carefully, indeed.

My friend is a very smart guy.

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"