Tornado and Transponder

Last Saturday a Tornado hit the southeast side of Wichita. It maxed out at an EF3 and the damage trail was about a mile wide in places.  The Cherokees were tucked in the garage safe and sound here at home and the storm missed us entirely except for some wind and rain.  However, Leah and I's workplace took a direct hit and as a result of that we have this week off work.  We went flying in the 2-33 on Monday and between 3 students (Leah, Matt, Bob) I flew 4 instructional flights each lasting ~1 hr.  It was a good day! 

Matt has been working on the Standard Austria with his days off.  I've been doing some work around the house but also getting a lot of work done on YYY.  I bought a Microair transponder a few weeks ago and took this time to start getting it installed. When I first moved to Wichita I got a Garmin 320 transponder but never actually got it installed.  I did have a wiring harness and encoder for it which I planned to use for the Microair.  I spent most of yesterday working with the wiring diagrams of the Garmin and the Microair to get all the right wires moved to the right pins.  I managed to accomplish that without too much trouble.  Today I went out to the avionics shop and got a circuit breaker and a length of RG-58 coax with BNC connectors for the antenna cable. 

Most of the day was spent removing the instrument panel and running errands.  I got a new battery as the old one had drained down so far that it wouldn't take a charge. Then I was able to hook up the transponder and encoder on the bench and make sure everything was working.  All seemed well and the reported pressure altitude from the encoder seemed accurate.  Then I started wiring everything into the glider and installed the antenna.  By the end of the night I had the wiring harness and antenna cable in place and all the instrument panel put back together.  The only thing left is to make a mounting bracket to mount the actual transponder under the instrument panel.  Here I've taken a picture of me sitting in the glider and holding the transponder in approximately its ultimate location.  Hopefully this weekend we'll be able to do some more soaring!