ELT Died, Need to Replace

[OntheNumbers]

My Cardinal's in for the annual inspection and ELT check. I got a call from the Avionics tech telling me my Ameri-King AK-451 had zero power output on 121.5 and 245 and no modulation on 406 MHz. Odd - but I never took advantage of the top-of-the-hour timeslot for testing it so my bad for letting it get into that state undetected.

Anyhow, two options were presented:
1) Send the ELT to Ameri-King for repair
2) Buy a new one

The AK was installed in 2009 - so hasn't really been in service for very long. I've read a few things about the quality of AK ELTs not being very good. I'm interested in the ARTEX 345 or perhaps a Kannad product.

What's the prevailing opinion out there for make and model?

BTW - I tried searching this forum with a simple "ELT" in the search box and got zip replies. Then first thing I see on the Maintenance forum are 2 posts about ELT. Go figure - if there's a way for something not to work, just ask me to try it.

Cheers
C-FXQK

[Big Pistons Forever]

FWITW, My local Avionics guy has told me they have had very poor experiences with AmeriKing 406 ELT's. They have a high fail rate and very poor customer support. I believe he now only installs Artex or Kennan units and will not deal with AmeriKing.

[JVader]

My father is dealing with the same thing with his 2012 ameriking elt, they're junk and the customer support the offer is even worse. The fact that they can make such a shoddy product and sell it as an essential life saving piece of equiptment blows my mind, steer way clear...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cIpmgsbac

[OntheNumbers]

OMG - don't be afraid to say how you really feel! That's quite a piece of footage - I was already thinking he was pretty P.O'd making a 5 minute video condemning the Ameri-King - the last 30 seconds is priceless, LMFAO

Thanks for posting, both, I feel lucky having had 6 years out of this unit!

Time to go shopping.

Cheers

[CpnCrunch]

Yep, AmeriKing are junk. We had to replace a one that was only a few years old because it was randomly activating. The AME also tells us that they are a POS.

[sportingrifle]

My shop said the same thing about the Amerikings.....They are popular because they are the cheapest and the battery packs are also cheap. Sure enough, we had one and at 18 months old and it started to spontaneously transmit. Repair estimate is almost the cost of the unit.

Moving up in price from $US800 to $US1100 you bump up against the Kanad and the Artex. The Kanad can be a little easier to install but beware - the battery packs are over twice the price of the Artex. So we have installed Artex's in our last 3 airplanes and haven't had any problems. Hope this helps.

Cheers sportingrifle

[OntheNumbers]

Yeah, I'm done with the Ameri-King so it'll be another brand. Artex and Kannad both get good reviews - although the amount of information about ELTs and reviews of ELTs is pretty minimal compared to the usual avionics. ACK has also caught my eye and I might Take one for the team and get their E04 Upgrade kit.

Thanks for the report!