SOLVED: PAW WiFi failure

[RobertPBham]

I would just like to say thank you to David at PilotAware Hardware - I received the new parts next day which is fantastic service!

I had a chance to test the PAW at Wellesbourne over the weekend and with an hours flight, I didn't experience any drop outs or failures which is great news - it appears that replacing both of those items resolved my issue.

Thanks
Rob

[rogellis]

Just to say I have had my PAW on all day, and while the ADSB dongle is warm, the wifi dongle is cold.  The entire PAW unit only consumes about 5w, so it should not get warm enough to melt.  Sounds like an internal short somewhere.

R

[exfirepro]

Rog,

The SDR dongles tend to run very warm as they need to dissipate quite a bit of power when working hard. Under normal circumstances, this is not an issue, but in a confined space, or where there is anything which could interfere with effective heat dissipation (such as Rob’s padded case for example) the excess heat tends to be absorbed by the USB hub metalwork and can be transferred to the other dongles, very occasionally causing one or more of them to fail, which is what happened in Rob’s case.

PilotAware Hardware will of course replace ‘faulty’ components under warranty, but users should try to minimise anything which will/might reduce the unit’s ability to dissipate any excess heat.

In this case it was decided to replace the ‘defective’ parts free of charge, so Rob is now happily back in action.

Regards all and Merry Christmas

Peter