I finally got word back on my Terra transponder today...unrepairable. Parts are unavailable. Apparently those particular components are no longer available, and there's nothing comparable. I have a EE buddy who wants a crack at it, but he's pretty busy rebuilding a Yak 52 at the moment, so I'm probably going to order a Microair T2000 that will fit in the hole that the g-meter now lives in (it doesn't see much action now that I've learned how to land).
My EE buddy thinks my transponder fairing may have been a contributing factor (see http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/fairings.html ) because he says anything touching it will change the impedence, and therefore the load the transmitter sees. I don't know how critical that is, but he gave me a Bendix blade antenna that I may substitute in its place. He says painting the thing may even screw it up. He also pointed out that if the coax is disconnected even for a few seconds, that 200 watts has no place to go and can blow something up. I would hope it would be more robust than that, but the bottom line is that mine's dead and I have to replace it. It should be mentioned that the Terra transponders have always had a spotty record. If I remember correctly, Jeff Scott's came out of the box DOA, so maybe I should be happy with a good year of service. But because that leaves a half sized hole in my panel, and there are a lot of things I'd like to change now that the panel is sort of "finalized", I may make another instrument panel one of these days... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
