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Icom A210 troubleshoot

alpinelakespilot2000

Well Known Member
After 8 years of flying with a trouble-free A210 installation, I started the plane up yesterday only to find that the radio wouldn't power up (or at least the display wouldn't come on and I couldn't hear anything on the frequency it was set to when I last used it). I checked the fuse at the avionics buss and the ground for good contact--no issues there.

I'm aware of the long-standing issue of the ribbon cable, but given that I haven't moved the radio since it was installed, at least 10 years ago, I'm a bit skeptical that is the issue (though it would be great if that's all it was).

Before I try to contact Icom and get asked to send the unit in for what I'm expecting to be an exhorbitant amount of money, any troubleshooting ideas? Anyone had the same thing happen? I didn't see a similar situation in the thread archives. Would love to get back in the air as soon as possible.

Thanks.
 
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Update-

Went to hangar today. Lo and behold, when I turned the radio on just to check it one more time, it turned on. No rhyme or reason for why it didn't work yesterday but did today.

Not sure if that makes me feel better or not.
 
Steve

I have an A210 in my -4 that one day wouldn't switch frequencies and stick. Tower in active and ground in standby, hit the swap button and it would switch. But a second later it would switch back on its own.
I didn't notice it was doing this when I called ground after exiting the runway and was asked nicely again to switch to ground. I punched the button again, called ground and was asked again by the tower to contact ground. Five more times, I'm yelling at the button on the radio, the guy in the tower is yelling at me... and then it never did it again.
 
Had one years ago that worked intermittantly when the radio was jiggled sideways in the tray. Check the contacts on the back of the radio.
 
Check that it hasn't vibrated around and dislodged something. Ribbon cable, fit in tray, etc.
 
Every so often pull your radios and clean the connectors with some contact cleaner. They can get a little corrosion on the pins after a while.
 
Had one years ago that worked intermittantly when the radio was jiggled sideways in the tray. Check the contacts on the back of the radio.

Check that it hasn't vibrated around and dislodged something. Ribbon cable, fit in tray, etc.

Every so often pull your radios and clean the connectors with some contact cleaner. They can get a little corrosion on the pins after a while.

Yes, I'm thinking now that the back connector is probably the issue. When I first built the panel and installed the radio I found that I had to put a washer/shim in between the harness plug and the radio tray. This allowed the harness plug to be inserted into the radio deeper and solved an inability to transmit. I'm guessing I'm dealing with something similar. Probably should have put two washers in right at the start.

Thanks for the input.
 
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