MOD IN A BOX

Save to de.icio.us

Price £2050

Like it or not, from March 2012 every aircraft in the UK will be required to have a Mode S transponder.

While many welcome it with open arms, some pilots think it's an unnecessary bit of hardware and, more painfully, expense and hassle. It's the law... but luckily, the industry is trying to ease the burden. There are several systems which do the job, but this month sees Adams Aviation's ‘mod-in-a-box’ Mode S kit for general aviation come under our microscope. It's meant to make the whole process far easier for buyers.

The kit comes with everything necessary for full installation: a Garmin 328 Transponder, docking rack and all the circuits and wiring. But the ace up the sleeve is the inclusion of a survey form that the installer fills in and sends to Tenencia (one of the companies which helped produce of Mod-in-a-Box). Tenencia raises a modification package based on the survey the installing engineer submitted. Then, all the engineer has to do is fit it and issue a log-book certificate. If avionic engineers had to raise the mod themselves and send it to EASA and wait for the paperwork to comeback, it could take months. Model for Mode S With Mode S looming, Adams Aviation have introduced an all-in-one package that promises to take much of the hassle and expense out of the process

This way the whole process from the survey to installation should take no longer than 10 days. It also removes hidden costs the owner might incur due to the engineer having to replace wires and other labour costs. Adams' Mod-in-a-Box will fit into any aircraft under 2700kgs, while all the other Mode S transponders on the market only fit to certain planes. Trig make a unit that fits the biggest selling transponder, so it will be a straight swap, but without a lot of hassle it won’t fit into others. Again this saves time, as the engineers know Mod-in-a-Box will fit in anything.

The Garmin 328 unit was chosen as most pilots find Garmin easy to use, and Garmin have a wide support network. Avionics engineer Adrian Norman from South Coast Avionics said, "There’s never any trouble with Garmin’s support. If there’s a technical issue the unit goes back to Garmin, and they don’t lose it, it comes back straight away fixed or they’ll replace it with a reconditioned unit instead." Robin Walsh of Adams explained, "When Adams decided to go ahead with this system there was a slight rush to get it on the market because, from March this year, Germany changed to Mode S and this unit wasn’t ready by the end of December. "This would have led to groundings with EASA unlikely to be able to deal with a mountain of requests in the run up to March, so when it was launched it was designed to be the best solution for Germany. It was a huge success because it ticked all the boxes, and the Germans love their boxes ticked. "Because it’s a mandate, and it’s a mandate that nobody really wants, Avionicare and Tenencia working with Adams have tried to keep a cost to a minimum, so the price has been kept low, and as such we are trying to make it as painless as possible. It’s not like buying a funky new GPS system that can be deemed as a cool piece of avionics.

"The Mode S is just ticking the boxes. But it is becoming more and more essential with the majority of European countries adopting Mode S by 2012, it means that if you are looking to travel abroad it's an essential upgrade sooner rather than later.”

Send To A Friend