Upgraded Avionics

Well, I've been flying my new plane for 1 week and it was time to do some upgrades.

First up was to replace the ValCom 760 with a new Icom A210 radio. This thing is amazing. My last plane had a SL40 and thus far at least (3 flights) I like the A210 better. Nice display and really neat memory functions along with a neat GPS interface to load frequency data automagically.

Next I needed to mount my Garmin 495 into the panel. An airgizmos dock fit the bill for that job. I also installed a couple of LEMO headset plugs to provide direct power for Lightspeed or Bose headsets.

Lastly, I revved the firmware by 3 years on the Grand Rapids EFIS and got lots of neat new features. It's even faster after the upgrade (when does that ever happen). :)

All in all it's coming along nicely. It's getting kind of like the space shuttle with all these screens and computers onboard...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2648/...40ca7620_b.jpg

So I've been looking around the internet for info on interfacing the A210 to various devices and gps units. Interesting that there is very little actual information out there. Lots of people talking about how bad it is, or what they don't like about the A210, very few of them have actually used one... interesting...

So, I wondered why it was so hard to hookup. Well here's why, the online download manual is out of date. The version I got with my new radio last week has been revved.

http://flying.karmy.com/wp-content/u...01-300x168.jpg

In the new version of the doc is lists the pins for serial data as 1 & 2 when using the molex connector.

http://flying.karmy.com/wp-content/u...8/IMG_0699.jpg

http://flying.karmy.com/wp-content/u...8/IMG_0700.jpg

Now for the last and most important part, does it work. Well, I can say that in my 1 flight so far it did load my local airport data into the GPS memory spot on the radio. It's too early to tell how it works exactly. I'll do some more flying and get it all figured out and report back.

It does work, you don't need to hook up pin1. Pin 2 to the gps out. On my 696 that's the blue wire. I get all the freqs on the waypoint or active direct to in the gps. Now get this, in the 210 in the memory for the gps it comes up with all the freqs listed, in fact they are listed for the airport and it has the listing for what thay are. Way cool. thay go into the standby or right side than you hit the white button and put it into the active. I love this.

I did a comprehensive check for this info yesterday and found it. I hooked it up last night. I've flown over 100hrs without it, nice to have.

Unfortunately, if your gps doesn't supply "FSI" code (mine doesn't), you can't use this feature :(.

So here's how it works. Once you take off from the airport, if you have an established course to a destination, you must get 8 miles away from your original airport before it will load the data for the new destination airport. Then it loads all of the freq that your GPS database has for that destination airport and you can easily select any of them to load into the radio. Very easy to use and a neat feature.

This is very different from how the SL30/SL40 work so if you've used those you will have to learn this new method.

In my case I'm using a Garmin 495 gps, I suspect that all of the newer Garmin handhelds will work. You select Aviation in / NMEA VHF OUT for the comunications setup on the GPS. You can also check the options under advanced setup, but I didn't have to change them. It's set at 9600 baud and works great.

I kind of found that out to. But not really, I left this morning and went to CDA, I flicked on the airport and did the direct to. Up came all the freqs. Last night I did the same thing and it stayed on felts field. So I turned off the gps and turned it back on, now it brought up the CDA field. It's a hit and miss and its to do with the gps.

I want to say thanks for the information on the gps not changing active airfields until 8miles out. I have been wondering why I couldn't get the freqs into my 210 right after take off. I guess thay do that so you have them for any unforseen reason leaving an airfield.