Why some Ray Allen LED indicators fail and some don't.

[ao.frog]

Hi.

This is to fill out the info in the other Ray Allen tread on this forum about the failure of some Ray Allen LED indicators:

A month ago, the LED indicator for the aileron trim in my -7, went blank about over a period of 4-5 flights.
The problem started with the indicator showing no lights for the first 10 mins of flight one day, then the time with no lights showing gradually increased to 30 mins over the next 4 flights.
Then there where no light at all in the indicator.

I sent an e-mail to Ray Allen and here's what Scott at Ray Allen wrote back to me:

Due to European requirements, we were forced to make lead free circuit boards that were more brittle and sometimes cracked.
Two years later the RoHS requirements were changed and Avionics were exempted.

Our new generation RP3 indicator are much more reliable.

If you send your indicators back to us, we can replace your internals with new generation parts for $25 each. We can also replace your indicators with
new ones if you don't want send your old ones back to us for $45 each.

Thankfully the 2005-2006 RP3 LED indicator and 2003-2007 REL-1 relay decks were the only lead free parts we built.
Not all of these products fail though. Most are working fine.

If anyone has a problem with these products, contact us for replacement.
All our other products were not affected.


He also wrote that there's no way besides the production year to tell if I have the new generation board or not but it's quite ok to send them my indicators for a free inspection.

So that's kind of good news to me: the indicators are much more durable with the new circuits, and it's quite reasonable to fix it too.
Good to know that they stand behind their product.