AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2024 - 93

the tiny solder cups on the round four-pin
carrier. Now, I've been soldering electronic
stuff since I was in grade school, but it was
clear that soldering wires to these solder
cups was going to be a non-trivial task.
For one thing, the four-pin assembly
was so tiny that the soldering was going to
have to be done under considerable magnification.
For another, it was going to be
necessary to apply enough heat to melt
dongle, using crimp splices and shrinkwrap
tubing. I then tidied up and secured
the wire bundle from the 696 to all the other
stuff connected to it using tie-wraps and
Adel clamps.
I powered up the airplane, moved
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the control yoke through its full range of
motion, and wiggled all the wires. My 696
was back in business.
The Kycon connector came as a kit
with eight tiny pieces and no assembly
instructions.
the solder but not enough heat to melt
the plastic pin carrier. I'm not going to tell
you how I found this out. Suffice it to say
that I jumped on the DigiKey website and
ordered two more KPPX-4P connectors,
having ruined the first one.
Two days later, the second package
arrived. The good news was that my second
attempt at soldering the wires to the four
pins without destroying the plastic pin carrier
was a lot more successful. The bad news
was that my first attempt at assembling the
pin carrier to the six other components in
the kit resulted in destruction of several of
the parts. Color me frustrated.
Fortunately, I still had one more
KPPX-4P kit left, and the third attempt
proved the charm. The result of my efforts
was two feet of four-wire cable with a
KPPX-4P on one end and bare wires on
the other end. When I plugged the Kycon
connector into my 696 and connected my
24-volt power supply to the red and black
wires, the 696 powered up. Yes!
The next day, I drove to my hangar with
my 696 and its new two-foot dongle in tow.
I chopped the defective right-angle plug
off the end of the Garmin cable and carefully
attached the Garmin cable to the new
Thought experiment
After taking a victory lap, a thought popped
into my head: What would have happened if
I had been a " normal " aircraft owner-one
who wasn't an A&P mechanic? Presumably
I'd have taken the airplane to an avionics
shop to get the problem resolved.
Would the avionics shop tell me, " Sorry,
those Garmin power/data cables are no longer
available " ? Or would they have done all
the detective work necessary to find the
Kycon KPPX-4P connector? If they did
that, would they have ordered one on speculation
to see if it fit the socket in the 696?
Would they have located the instructional
video for assembling the connector? Or
would they have told me, " Sorry, we found
a connector that might possibly work, but
it's not FAA-approved " ?
What do you suppose the likelihood
of them going through everything I went
through to come up with a viable solution,
and what would the invoice total be?
My best guess is that instead of replacing
the five-dollar connector that had gone
bad, they would have suggested I toss my
old unsupported 696 and let them sell me
a new Garmin Aera 760 touchscreen portable
($1,549), a GDL-51 SiriusXM receiver
($775), and the associated cables and yoke
mount hardware. Keeping a 45-year-old
airplane with 20-year-old avionics can certainly
be a challenge.
mike.busch@savvyaviation.com
savvyaviation.com
Ask the A&Ps /
Mike Busch, Paul New, and Colleen
Sterling answer your toughest
aviation maintenance questions on
our Ask the A&Ps podcast. Submit
questions to podcasts@aopa.org
aopa.org/ask-the-a-and-ps
AOPA PILOT / July 2024
93
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2024

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