Repalcing a Narco 810
 

The current candidates are:

Dittel KRT2 - £1,100
Funkwerk ATR833 LCD - £1,200
Funkwerk ATR833 OLED - £1,350
Trig TY91 - £1,550
Becker ATR6201 - £1,550

Does anybody have experience with any of these units / manufacturers?

I'm tempted by the simple fascias of the Dittel and Trig units. I used a predecessor to the Becker way back in the 1990's and recall it being easy enough, if a little fussy in the display, to use.

Funkwerk ATR833 is "ok" not fitted one but have used it.

Trig TY91 - £1,550 - very good - easy to fit and use in the air (for its size)

Becker ATR6201 - £1,550 - Have a friend with one who does not rate it.

Both the trigg & Becker units are very good and I would be happy to fit either one in a two seat aircraft, the com performance for both is very good and so the decision will come down to ease of instalation in the particular aircraft and the intercom that the units provide.

As you are removing the Narco this unit that uses the Trigg tx unit might be of interest as it will fit the same panel width, I have always found the PS engineering intercoms superb.

http://www.ps-engineering.com/PAR200.shtml

What ever you decide you will be light years ahead of the Narco in terms of quality and reliability.

Send me the 810, I've got two that work well, one more and I'm set for life ;)

Silvaire1, I may take you up on that offer! You don't want a matching AT150 Transponder as well by any chance?

You are going to stay with round instrument?

Dittel KRT2 - a friend fitted one for 833 upgrade. I find the display a bit hard to read in sunlight (and it failed already once and had to be replaced also) and handling is not my favorite, but it is the most affordable one on the market (you can find them for <1.000)
Funkwerk ATR833 LCD, Funkwerk ATR833 OLED - nice little fellows, I used both in some charter planes, but was not impressed by audio quality. They have a reputation for not very good transmit/receive capability, but I have not experienced that.
Trig TY91 - my favorite from the list, nice display, great audio, quite ok to handle even with gloves
Becker ATR6201 - one of the classics and on par technically with the Trig, most of the times a tit more expensive
One more to the list: MGL V6 - probably the most affordable way to get 833.

If you are going to fumble at the audio panel and have an N-reg or experimental, the PAR200 from PS Engineering is another hot candidate, as it is an audio panel driving a Trig in the back (and Gear of the Year 2014). Unfortunately it is only FAA TSO'ed and they struggle since almost a year to get ETSO - no idea when this is coming, yet.

Have you considered the ATR 833a OLED Transceiver (£1440.00 incl VAT). Full size so will fit in better and probably easy to use in bumpy conditions. It is currently top of my list but I have not used or fitted one.

Rod1

Thank you all for your contributions.

It looks like the Trig TY91 is the leader so far although the 833a looks interesting as it should minimise the installation work if it can use a similar tray to the 810..

A and C the PAR200 is interesting but a bit of overkill for a 2 seater!

Yes.. May be overkill but twenty years flying with a PS Engineering audio system that has been superb in terms of audio quality and has never given a moments trouble resulted in me having to throw it into the mix.

Personally having used the Trigg I would go for that in a seat two aircraft as the audio is not bad........... But not up to the PS standard.


At the moment I am doing a mega Garnin upgrade on my aircraft but despite all the pressure to make it an all Garmin panel the audio is going to to be from PS engineering rather than the cheaper ( and quite good) Garmin item.

Trig, they just do what they say on the tin P.S. I use the built in intercom and its perfectly good for a 2 seater, not even considering an add on unit

Our flight school has re- equipped all the aircraft with Garmin SL40's and in 2 years we have not had one act up despite plenty of student abuse.

Big pistons
 

The SL40 is a good reliable unit but you can no longer fit it into an aircraft in Europe as it is not 8.33, those that are fitted will have to be removed by 2018.

ChickenHouse, the MGL V6 - which is a very good bit of kit, is unfortunately not EASA approved and so cannot be legally fitted in the UK (or the rest of Europe);

MGL VHF-6

Rod1

:) :) I've got a King Mode C transponder that seems to work fine, but the Narco comm and nav do make me a bit nervous. It does take a certain weight off my mind seeing good ones coming out of service and available. That's why I bought a good spare comm for $250 USD, to have it ready to slide in if needed. I'll think about some kind of upgrade someday, maybe in 2020 when I'll need to do some avionics work anyway to be ADS-B Out compliant.

No problem today regardless having Center hearing & seeing me and calling 737s as my traffic.

I bought one of these units today, PS Engineering :audio select panels
The issue: I needed a second com radio but had no room on the stack along side my garmin 40, garmin330, garmin 496 and my PS 8000b audio panel, I planned on getting a Trigg and mounting the radio remotley from the controller in a spare 21/4 inch hole but it would have looked like **** and not been uniform, I never realized that PS made a combined unit ( audio panel with built in trigg) till I read the post above, I bought the combo unit AND antenna today for less than I could get the trigg on its own as per the advertised prices locally.
The compromise : I lost the marker beacon set up on the old pma8000b but my digital VOR has the lights and I can pipe the audio alert over to the NAV 1 on the new PAR200 so no loss there, I do however lose the recording capability but pick up Bluetooth functions for hooking up the phone which is a good trade off.

It looks like a cracking bit of kit, and at risk of brushing up against forum rules I will have a mint condition PMA 8000b leftover after the change out

Edit to add, the PAR is a direct tray changeout for the 8000b so install expense should be minimal apart from wiring the trigg as COM 2

I'm pleased you found the suggestion helpfull.

@piperboy: on which registry are you flying? I was daring to get a PAR200, but as long as it is only TSO'ed and not ETSO'ed there is no way to get it legally installed in my plane (still hoping PS arranges with Trig to generate a pre-approved Minor Change, but guess it'll never happen).

N registration

Lucky you!

Could you open a new thread and share your experience with this promising device, would you?

Ok, so spent the last few days installing the PAR200' not going well, it would have been helpful if the aircraft manufacturer had left a smidgen of slack when wiring the D-sub connector on the back of the PMA 8000b tray that will serve as the tray for the PAR200.

The install involves essentially sliding out the 8000b, making a wiring harness between the new trig radio and adding the new wires to the existing wiring harness behind the audio panel .

The problem I have is the new Trig will not boot up as Com2, the manual says by installing a jumper between pins 25 and 26 on the connector tells the new radio that it is Com2, but the unit displays com 1 on boot up and ports the trig audio regardless of com1 (the original garmin sl40)or com2 ( the new radio)being selected on the panel buttons.

Will give trig a call Monday.