Fred,
When I read your post a few posts back, I thought I was crazy and I must have posted that. Your story pretty much echos what I found. I did the physical install this weekend, made a plate to mount it all on that fit the same footprint as my ADS600B, and then flew it this week.
I encountered ALL of the same issues as you did.
First, I repeatedly emailed both companies well in advance to let them know that they were not including the right adapters for ADS600B users. We need MCX to TNC and SMA to TNC, and neither adapter was provided with my kit. I had to order them separately, and thankfully Amazon got them to me quickly. The sad part was, there were many weeks in advance that if someone would have listened to my emails, this could have been prevented.
Then, I *thought* that the feature list was pretty good. The UAT had most everything other than an Encoder input. My old system was wired to my GTX330 and 327 (2 planes, 2 systems) 9600 baud, was wired to a USB wifi adapter @ 115,200baud, was out to the EFIS at 38,400 baud. And of course my ADS600B had dedicated Encoder inputs at 9600 baud.
I wired my system up expecting to get everything but the encoder working simultaneously, but it didn't work that way. As it turns out, you can only set the baud rate in one spot for both TX and RX for each of the 2 ports. So, effectively, if I needed 115,200 in from the GPS, and I needed 38,400 out for the EFIS, that was all I could have connected and working. You can't ALSO have GTX input at 9600 baud, you can't have an encoder, and I'm still not sure that I can even output 115,200 TRAFFIC to another system. I submitted a ticket, but got no reply.
Then I flew the system and got 11.06% baro failure, and 4.68% Mode 3A failure. I read your post that maybe I should test it by flying with it turned off near the Class B area, then turn it on, fly, and turn it off before I head back home. But, now I'm a little worried. With a dedicated encoder input and a hardwired squawk update wire, you could pretty much count on always sending the info that makes the FAA happy. Without it, you rely on 1) your transponder functioning perfect, and 2) the UAT constantly and consistently hearing the transponder and 3) the UAT updating the info to match as appropriate. Sure, it should work, but what's the chance, based on this test flight, that it's going to happen at such a high consistent rate that we never have issues. NavWorX got in trouble by cutting corners on the GPS module, which, had we received upgraded modules, wouldn't have been a problem. But now we see where they are. What happens if some day the FAA decides that these systems aren't producing the 100% accuracy with enough consistently. Will we be required to pull these out too? It's too early for me to sweat it to badly, but I would like to get my support ticket answered so I at least know how close I am to meeting my goals. If the baud rate for TX and RX could be independently set for each port, I could fix at least some of these problems.
The other question I asked was, since the system is delivered with a pre-set SSID and no wifi security, is that user-changeable? If not, then someone with a smart phone could walk around OSH reconfiguring everyone's ADS-B system when they power up to taxi. I'd like to be able to define my own SSID and secure it if possible.
Oh, and I, like you Fred, found that the premade harness was very very excessively long. I was able to buy additional connectors and pins from Digikey and just make my own DB37 to Molex harness. I'm not super thrilled with molex as a connector...one of my pins didn't like to stay clipped in very well at first. But, technically, we're flying behind systems made for a UAV, not made for actual metal airplanes, and at the price point we're looking I guess that's to be expected.
On the very up-side, it's extremely nice to have dual frequency traffic on the box. And, I did see traffic easily from 50 miles away.
One more down side though. The ADS600B was set to filter and display only the nearest traffic up to whatever count you set, and also only traffic within +/- 8000' of your altitude. This kept unnecessary clutter off your EFIS. I noticed day one with the Echo that the first airplane I was was +361' (FL 37000~ since I'm at 900'). I sure hope they add some options to the config interface that allow us to set bounds on what traffic is displayed. It's hard enough some days when flying on days like during the eclipse to pick out the planes near you....I don't need to be distracted by airline traffic at the same time.
I'll see how my support ticket goes. I have a 2nd unit arriving for the other plane, but won't start that install until I see how this all shakes out and get a good handful of flights out of it.