Smiths Radio Altimeter

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Smiths WL63AMR/FA/3 Radio Altimeter

introduction

Searching for information about the Tornado TV TAB display unit I found the youtube video channel of Michel Waleczek from France. He makes great video's of avionics tear downs and spectacular reverse engineering! So I saw also the video of the vintage Radio Altimeter WL63AMR/FA/2 manufactured by Smiths Industries. This in avionics instrument with a characteristic green dial. I got very interested and bought one also. ;-)

The instrument is a servo loop controlled radio altitude indicator. There's a warning light which is activated if the manual set altitude is passed. There's also a indicator flag built in to act as a warning that the instrument isn't powered and therefore the readings are incorrect.

Michaels video can be viewed here:

connections

There are two models known to me, the WL63AMR/FA/2 and the WL63AMR/FA/3. The instruments look identical, but the connector differs as shown below. The left one is the WL63AMR/FA/2 model and the right one is the WL63AMR/FA/3 model.

WL63AMR/FA/2
There's one heavy duty circular connector at the rear. Luckily Michel found out the connection for use for the WL63AMR/FA/2! The connections are mentioned below.

powersupply:

A: 26 VAC 400 Hz power supply input

dial lighting:

C+D: 5 Vrms for dial lighting

error flag indicator:

E+J: +28 V for the arror flag actuator (signal on = flag removed)

measurement:

G: 0...10V input voltage for 0...5000 feet indication

H: measurement reference voltage (Vref = 12V for 0...10V indication)

F: common terminal for input [G] and reference voltage [H]

WL63AMR/FA/3
Info yet unknown...

Source: Connection information of the WL63AMR/FA/2 connector by Michel Waleczek

dial lighting

type plate