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G3X Touch ACK ELT RS-232 Connection

ShortSnorter

Well Known Member
Long story short, my Van's factory wiring harness has shielded wire run from the tail of the plane to the panel. When building my panel harnesses, the ELT was not taken into consideration and omitted somehow.

I used my last RS-232 Out avaialbe on my GDU and made the connection with some spare AWG 20 to the Vans harness and did a quick test at the ELT using the LED light "blinking" - Success!

Question: Are there any concerns from running non shielded wire from the GDU to the Van's harness (I don't have any shielded wire on hand)?

Oh & Merry Christmas!! ;)
 
What does the install manual for ELT require? Shielded 20-22 gauge is only $1 a foot from ACS. Then you remove any doubt that make linger and bug you for years.
 
The Van’s supplied harness does use shielded wire (also recommended by ACK), but has 2 molex connectors by the time the run makes it from the tail to the sub panel area.

If I were to use shielded wire from the GDU to the Van’s harness, would you ground the shield to the backshell, run the shield to ground, etc?

The stock harness runs the shield to ground all the way from the ELT to the panel. I feel like I’m missing something simple here to make the last connection from the GDU to the stock Van’s harness. As I mentioned I have it operating as is, I’m just not sure what to do with the shield on the short connection.
 
I would ground the shield to the backshell using pigtails and solder splices. If there are molex connectors then use the connector to continue the shield circuit if there's a spare spot, or jump it with a small lead
 
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