You might check with Williams or Beegles to see if they have a pre-repaired one that they can cross ship you for yours.

If you don’t power the 3rd prong, it won’t work, because it’s not going to engage the contactor (PC8 provides power to the coil that closes the ground power contractor) that allows the power to flow to the main bus. I agree re:engine start & avionics master, someone just needs to disconnect PC8 from the avionics relay and that should no longer…[Read more]

The relay was to disconnect the radios during any start… jump or regular. If you were not to power the 3rd prong, it won’t engage the contactor that allows the power to flow to the bus (the contractor labeled #3 on the graphic).

The AD was because a few of them left the factory wired wrong and when you plugged in the plug the starter would engage, good times.

http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/AOCADSearch/AB8B5C20D3FB408B86256A3400683BBE?OpenDocument

There are a number of options, but a couple would be remove the relay and add a breaker switch to between main bus and avionics bus, or remove the connection between the GPU plug and the relay, this would keep it from powering the relay up, cutting out the power feed to avionics bus. The ’74 172M mentioned above has already been modified to some…[Read more]

Yes, but if you want it to work differently, your A&P could change the behavior as a minor modification pretty easily. It is nice to be able to power the avionics bus from external power for either practicing with the panel or doing software updates and the like.

It’s normal when wired to the original wiring diagrams.  Plugging in the aux power will activate the avionics bus relay (same way that the starter switch does) which removes power from the bus (it’s a normally closed relay, and opens when it gets power applied from either the starter switch or the ground power). Many have been modified over the…[Read more]

The original P/N was the S2160-1 which is now TA201-TW-B. You can order from Spruce, but you can order the new P/N for less from various electronics vendors, it’s a Carling switch. Here is the SEB Ed mentions above about changing those out: https://support.cessna.com/custsupt/contacts/pubs/ourpdf.pdf?as_id=27055 Switching to LED for the…[Read more]

Looking in the service manual, section 5-49 for rigging of the landing gear, paragraph o says “Reset GEAR PUMP circuit breaker, place gear position selector handle in DOWN position, turn master switch ON and check gear extension time to be less than six seconds.” and p says “Place gear position selector handle in UP position and check gear…[Read more]

Upgrading a 430 to a 430w is almost usually not worth it these days. You can usually sell the 430 and buy a 430w for lower differential than the WAAS upgrade costs.

You’ll get more selling the unit outright. Unless you are looking for the minimum effort, you’ll do much better not trading it in. Heck, I’ll give you $3k for it as long as it’s in good working order.

You may need to find a new shop 🙂 Even the GMA 340 supported stereo at every jack.

Well, absolutely 100% for sure, they can get stereo sound (if wired to stereo jacks and stereo headsets plugged in). I’m actually not sure if Garmin does the Virtual-3D comm audio to the rear seats or not, though I imagine it would. I’ll have to plug in to my rear jacks and try it out to be sure. However, if your rear seaters are listening to…[Read more]

Highly recommend Savvy, even at the free tier. It’s very easy to share the data with others for analysis and they have a nice interface for looking at things like GAMI spread. I have all our regular maintenance customers signed up with them (some are paying, some just free) and they can send me links to look at if they have questions.

Glad you got it figured out!

Did you recently install the 450B? What did you have in it before? How long had you had the 450 before this issue cropped up? The static-y nature of it vs pulsed noise from the transmission makes me feel it’s likely the DME audio and not some induced noise. The volume of the audio panel I believe only changes the intercom volume, not the volume of…[Read more]

Is the DME audio wired in to the PMA450B audio panel? If so (and it probably is), are you sure that the DME source is not selected in the audio panel?

Do you have a GTN attached to it? If you do, just tap the transponder control box on the display, then tap flight ID and type it in. If you don’t have a GTN, you’ll need to do it the slower way through front panel of the 345.  You’ll press the FUNC key until the display shows XPDR. Then press the 8 and 9 (up and down) keys until it shows Flight…[Read more]

Are you flying pilots and paws or something where you are going to need to be changing the flightID? It’s not too bad to change it (assuming installed set it up for configurable flightID), but a little clumsy due to not having a query keyboard (you end up entering it like the old T9 text messaging). However, if you have it interfaced to a GTN,…[Read more]

It’s counter-intuitive/non-obvious but that does also share the profile. There is a link to the profile in the email and when someone taps it, it imports the profile to ForeFlight.