wrote in message
...
Robert M. Gary wrote:
: Do you think there is any value in the MX-170? The display seems very
: effected by moisture. For the last couple of years it would be dark
: during run up and would slowly come back after the moisture was driven
: out of the cabin. Today, it went to 100.00 on all 4 freqs in
: mid-flight. The company that makes it (TKM) refuses to fix it because
: they want me to buy their new model and they don't offer the manuals so
: no shop can legally work on it. Its too bad too. I had the exact same
: problem with my KX-155, the shop simply replaced the display for a very
: reasonable amount of money. In my opinion, TKM are just being butts
: about this.


I had a friend that got screwed out of his radio in the same way. Bought
an
ebay-special MX-170 that worked, but had a little display problem and the
volume was a
little low. Sent it to Michel since they would supposedly fix it for a
flat rate
(something like $200 or something IIRC). Well, they sat on the radio
giving bullsh*t
stories of how it was ready, no there was more broken, now it was in final
adjustment
stage, and finally he was told he had to buy a new one. Couldn't even get
the old one
back unless he paid about 1/2 the cost of a new one in labor for
diagnostics.

He also had a MX-12. After getting screwed on the MX-170, I volunteered
to
look inside a bit. They are built much cheaper than King units....
regular COTS ICs,
sockets, ribbon cables, LEDs, etc. That's cheap and easily fixable: as
long as you
can get them to fix it or give you the info to do so yourself. Ribbon
cables aren't
chafe-protected, non-gold-plated connectors, cheesy DIP sockets for many
ICs, etc.

If you look inside a King unit, they're built to avionics standards... not
cheapo consumer VCR standards.

Hell., some of the king stuff I have seen don't even have solder mask on
the PCB and they use old very cheap boards Not even fiberglass FR4


My recommendation: Don't by Michel anything.

-Cory

--

************************************************** ***********************
* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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