TailBeaconX

The uAvionix TailBeaconX is a very cool little beast.  Has its own GPS, mode S transponder, and ADSB in and out.  Oh, and a light...

AND, its supported by the AFS-5600, so you can drive it from the PFD and MFD.

The wiring is pretty simple.  Power, ground, RS232 TX and RX.

In my case, I am mounting it inside the fuselage about 12" behind bulkhead A.  The mounting bracket and unit weigh less than half a pound.  The wiring weighs the same, if not more.

Other than the fact that when I wired it I mixed up the TX and RX lines, it worked right away.

The TailBeaconX is configured through wifi.  There is an app for your smartphone, and you set everything up through that.

Using the app should be straightforward, and once you follow this process it does work.  Took me awhile to find it.

Advanced already setup the PFD and MFD to talk to it, you just have to initialize it through the Set->Admin>Transponder menu.

Unfortunately our house has foil in the roof, and is stucco.  Basically a faraday cage.  No traffic being shown, but one day I will push it outside and see what I can see.

So after some fussing about, I realized that the TailBeaconX only does ADSB-OUT - not IN.  That is fine, since I have a separate dual band ADSB receiver from Dynon.

Mounting... simple fiberglass bracket bonded just behind bulkhead A.

The transponder and mounting bracket weigh 5.25 oz.

Installed, wired and configured...

Still need to secure the wires, but the mounts are already in place (and epoxied in).

Dont know if it is actually working or not, but it seems to be.

One really important note:  Some of the configuration needs to happen on the tail beacon.  This is done through the build in wifi access point in the TBx itself.  You can only configure it when the transponder is in standby - which makes sense.  I was trying to verify the configuration and had the transponder 'ON" on the EFIS.... uAvionix support figured that out really fast.

Super cool technology.