I'm not afraid of much but I am of this

My trusty ?Apollo 706 by 11morrow? may need to be replaced after 25 years of flawless service. On my last several flights when pulling G?s as in acro or even hitting turbulence I noticed a scratchy squelch type interference in the headset but it stopped after the G?s were relaxed. I swapped headsets, used the rear seat input jacks and checked the connections from the com antenna to the rear of the tray input connections. I fear I might have an internal problem that may be causing this intermittent G induced fault. I pulled the radio out of its rack and reset it and will do some more trouble shooting in the AM before giving up on my old radio.
With this in mind I?m looking at the Garmin GTR 200 com and have read through the installation manual. Many good reviews on the radio are published and it will fit the existing opening in my panel. Now I must admit, I?d rather do another wet wing tank then go through the wiring process involved in making this switch. My question is, does the harness that is sold by Aircraft Spruce allow a more seamless installation by someone that is wiring challenged, breaks out in sweat, has nightmares days after the installation of an electronic unit
Also, I fly formation and my old radio had push buttons with the preselected freq?s so when the command was ?push? that?s just what I did. The GTR has only knobs that I can see, so pushing a button which was so intuitive on my old setup is handled differently. How do you get to preselected freq?s?
Thanks for any help that may be posted here.
Hans

Saber25 said:

Also, I fly formation and my old radio had push buttons with the preselected freq?s so when the command was ?push? that?s just what I did. The GTR has only knobs that I can see, so pushing a button which was so intuitive on my old setup is handled differently. How do you get to preselected freq?s?
Thanks for any help that may be posted here.
Hans

Click to expand...

According to the buy.garmin.com page,

Pilot-configurable soft keys can provide 1-touch access to emergency frequency tuning, pilot audio isolation, saved frequencies list, music mute or push-to-talk. Plus, optional installed remote switches on the flight controls allow pilots to keep their hands on the controls while performing functions like swapping the active and standby frequencies.

Just get on with it. You will love the GTR-200. Put the money you can get from selling whatever intercom you have that is no longer needed toward gas that will help the recovery from the trauma.

If you have questions just ask and be prepared for the deluge of opinions (most of them valid) as to the best way to tackle the problem.

BTW - the connectors on the GTR make wiring the thing up mush easier that previous radio connector types. So there's that...

Based on the title of this thread, I thought you might be getting married.

Tough

Tough it out Hans, you gotta pay your dues. Man up!!!!

GTR-200

I just installed this radio in my RV-7. I dumped my old Terra radio and stand alone intercom. This little radio is awesome and easy to use. The intercom is great too. I bought it from Aircraft Spruce with their 2 place intercom harness for only $1275.00. I have it connected to my 796 for the Freq fly in.

Buy it. You won't regret it.

Thank goodness, it sounds positive, I thought for awhile I might have to revert to light signals from the tower and hand signals from lead. So I'm going out today for a last ditch effort to see if I missed anything while troubleshooting.

I'll plan on ordering the harness as well to simplify the installation if I can't find the problem on my old rig. By the way, the Apollo also had an internal intercom for commo with the GIB and considering how long ago I bought that radio it was state of the art.

Cheers, Hans

I had the same symptom - it was slightly corroded terminals on the spark plugs. Little bumps in turbulence, or continuous g loads would break squelch on both radios. I have EI, and when I cleaned up all the terminals and sprayed a little Tri-Flow into them before assembly, the problem was solved.

Alex,

That was some serious sleuthing, I would not have thought of that but I'll have a look. It's a fairly new ignition harness and slick mags with just under 400 hrs and I normally check the plugs every 50hrs and use dielectric on the ends.

Try flying on one ignition at a time, see if the symptom follows one mag.