Man, it's the little things that give you the most trouble. I'm logging 20 hours for this one entry. The touch labor in the shop wants nearly that long, but the troubleshooting and research into what was happening really got down in the weeds.

Anyway- I went with an Artex ELT. It doesn't require any external batteries, wiring is simple, and the main battery life is a year more than the ACK.

You may recall that way back when, I discovered that the mounting plate hole pattern was different that on the Van's supplied ELT mount, and I ended up having to rework the mount. Also, a few entries ago, I added a tab to mount and locally ground the buzzer.

All good so far, but when I got to the functional test, I was getting an error code. On the Artex, when you put it in test mode, you get a series of flashes on the LED's , both on the unit itself, and on the remote switch on the panel. You also get corresponding beeps on the buzzer. You then go into the manual to a chart to see what the code means.

In my case, I was getting 5 beeps, which means that the ELT isn't receiving detailed position data from the navigation source.

How this is supposed to work is that if it's triggered, the ELT still transmits on 121.5, and also to SAR-SAT but the data it sends to the satellites also includes its exact position down to 100 meters or so based on data it's getting from the GPS.

I starting wringing out wiring, reviewing schematics, checking for pins in the wrong hole, etc. Nothing was wrong with the installation that I could find.

I went to the internet and found a solution on VAF, which is probably where I should have started.

It turns out that even though the manual and ad copy both make a big deal about how this ELT can receive nav data from either NMEA or Aviation Protocol formats, it's an either/or situation. The default is Aviation protocol at 9600 baud rate. Thats what it comes set to, and it's not field adjustable. If you want the other one, you have to send it back to a dealer and have it reprogrammed to the tune of $250!

Cut to the chase; The reason I'm getting the error message is that the way my ships wiring works, the elt is getting data from the Garmin GDU460 pfd. Turns out that unit only outputs NEMA data, so the two units won't speak the same language unless I have the ELT reprogrammed!

The good news is that a Garmin IFR navigator has the ability to output in either format. I called my avionics guy and he was kind enough to tell me a connector and pin on the back of the GTN650 that would output serial data, so I didn't have to look that up.

Once I understood what the heck was happening, It really didn't take that long to fix. I unpinned the appropriate wire from the PFD and after working it out of that branch of the bundle, had enough length to reroute into the GTN650 without having to spruce anything.

I did have to cut off the D-sub pin and replace it with a hi-density version for the different connector style.

Got everything dis-assembled, re-assembled, and configured the channel to speak the correct language from the GTN. All is now well.