FORANE

FORANE

Well Known Member
Does anyone know if an adapter is available to convert from an ICOM A-210 to a SL-40? My ICOM has a Molex connector in the tray. I believe the SL-40 takes a DB15 connector. Can the A-210 tray be used with a SL-40? I would like to replace my A-210 with a SL-40.
 
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When I tried to replace my A200 with a SL-40, I found no easy solution. Ended up getting an A210 for the quick fix, and later installed the SL-40 with an additional audio panel. Liked having the two radios.
 
Brantel said:
May i ask why you changing?

Doubt such a connector exist.
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I have had nothing but problems with the A-210. I just bought it 3 months ago and have not been able to get it to work properly yet. I know my tray works because I had a KY97a working in it prior to the ICOM and triple checked all wiring before using the A-210.

I have been in email contact with ICOM many times. At a AM SQL
level of -4 I get frequent squelch bleed through yet frequently lose
receive even just 1 mile away as with talking to ground. At AM SQL -8
to -10 I lose transmit. Both these occur with no warning.

I don't know if there is a problem with my A-210 or not but I am exasperated.

I have sent the A-210 back to ICOM service for evaluation but have begun to lose faith in ICOM which is unfortunate given their long history.
 
FORANE said:
I have had nothing but problems with the A-210. I just bought it 3 months ago and have not been able to get it to work properly yet. I know my tray works because I had a KY97a working in it prior to the ICOM and triple checked all wiring before using the A-210.

I have been in email contact with ICOM many times. At a AM SQL
level of -4 I get frequent squelch bleed through yet frequently lose
receive even just 1 mile away as with talking to ground. At AM SQL -8
to -10 I lose transmit. Both these occur with no warning.

I don't know if there is a problem with my A-210 or not but I am exasperated.

I have sent the A-210 back to ICOM service for evaluation but have begun to lose faith in ICOM which is unfortunate given their long history.
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My Icom A-210 has worked just as well as my SL-40.
 
Well there may be something wrong with the A210 but if you sent it in for a check, give em a chance to make it right.

The A210 with the latest firmware works great and has an equal feature set to the SL40.

You may have gotten a lemon or one that needs some fine tuning. The A210 is mostly tuned by software parameters in a special service software that the ICOM guys use. It has a ton of variables they can tweak.

Give em a chance to fix it. You will love it for the price if you can get it working like normal.
 
We've changed out a bunch of these for folks and like Brian says it's unlikely you'll find an easy adapter (though there is one for going the other way around...but not many remove an SL and put in an IC). Regarding the radios, feature sets are good in the IC, but long/mid term reliability of them has shown to be lackluster at best when compared to the SL's. The design of it (like the little ribbon cable) lends itself to more trouble than the SL, but if you didn't have to remove the faceplate and the cable to remove the radio (or have to remove the radio ever at all) that wouldn't be an issue.

That being said, the older 200's are still going strong and from a robustness standpoint they seem to be holding up better than the 210's. The 210 can also have an issue where it moves a little bit off frequency in certain ranges sometimes. True that both can and will have a small percentage of lemons out of the box....but overall the SL's just surpass the IC's in that regard.

Anyway, not arguing either way just pointing out what my take on it has been (and we'll gladly sell you either).

Just my 2 cents as usual!

Cheers,
Stein
 
Brantel said:
Well there may be something wrong with the A210 but if you sent it in for a check, give em a chance to make it right.

The A210 with the latest firmware works great and has an equal feature set to the SL40.

You may have gotten a lemon or one that needs some fine tuning. The A210 is mostly tuned by software parameters in a special service software that the ICOM guys use. It has a ton of variables they can tweak.

Give em a chance to fix it. You will love it for the price if you can get it working like normal.
Click to expand...

Gave em a chance...sent it in as I was instructed to do by Icom service tech...here is a pic of the box that came back to me...
2jbr4u1.jpg
 
As someone that does factory service for another manufacturer, I have one piece of advice.

Any time you start to have problems have your antenna and transmission line checked with an antenna analyzer and/or a SWR meter.

Anything above 3:1 is unacceptable.

Most aircraft radios do not have VSWR protection and a subpar antenna will reflect RF power back into the radio and cause all sorts of problems in the transmit and receive sections of the radio.

I can't tell you how many times I've traced back radio problems to poor Archer or ring-terminal-type antennas. I just replaced one in my C150 and it had a VSWR of 4.5:1. Absolute junk.
 
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rocketbob said:
As someone that does factory service for another manufacturer, I have one piece of advice.

Any time you start to have problems have your antenna and transmission line checked with an antenna analyzer and/or a SWR meter.

Anything above 3:1 is unacceptable.

Most aircraft radios do not have VSWR protection and a subpar antenna will reflect RF power back into the radio and cause all sorts of problems in the transmit and receive sections of the radio.

I can't tell you how many times I've traced back radio problems to poor Archer or ring-terminal-type antennas. I just replaced one in my C150 and it had a VSWR of 4.5:1. Absolute junk.
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Good advice.
I currently have 2 antennas. One is an archer and the other is a whip style. The archer is superior to the whip. Problems I experienced with the A-210 occurred with both antennas, and on neither antenna when connected to other radios.
Is there a reasonably accurate SWR meter for the rare user (inexpensive) or is that a radio man item?
 
rocketbob said:
If your Archer antenna is working better, you've got some serious antenna problems bubba. ;)
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OK Bob

I ordered the MFJ-812B.

I may have antenna problems. I am no expert here at all. I do know my antennas work with other radios.

As far as the Archer antenna, it was receiving from 80nm even with the A-210. The A-210 just was not reliable in receive or transmit and highly variable based on squelch setting.

Full disclosure - the antenna is in my Lancair.
 
You can also use something like a Bird wattmeter which are quite common and have been around a hundred years.
I use a coaxial dynamics meter for power and SWR measurments which is just a little nicer than the Bird.

321.jpg


You can then use the "Bird RF Calculator" from the Bird website to figure out your SWR. Pretty neat program which runs in excel.

http://www.bird-technologies.com/resource/item-2cf1b0c9-c541-4e25-b250-f2f2ea64dbea.aspx

As an example for a 10 watt forward power with 1.1 watt being reflected back, this would yield a 1.99 VSWR (2 is usually the limit)
 
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