We have had a number of customers who report to us that their weather systems behave intermittantly right out of the box.  The most common symptom is that when they are testing them, they lose the bluetooth connection, sometimes after just a few minutes and need to be reconnected.

We have discovered that many of these customers were testing their systems at home using 120Volt to 12V power converters purchased at Radio Shack or Circuit City.  These converters were being used so that the entire system could be tested at home, where there was no vehicle power available.

Many such converters are not suitable for running the system.  The most common converter being used by customers having problems are small wall transformers with a built in 12V cigarette lighter like recepticle.  These converters are rated at 12V, 1 Amp output.  This is just barely adequate to run the systems and the system will operate erratically using these adapters.  The weather receiver does not have any internal batteries and if the power sags or drops out even briefly the bluetooth link will be lost.

Dropped blue-tooth connections between the Ipaq and the WXWorx weather box is a strong indication of bad power, whether at home or in the aircraft.  If you see a lost connection in the aircraft, you will see the message XM TIMEOUT pop up in red.   The most common cause of XM TIMEOUT in the aircraft is an intermittant power connection to the cigarette lighter plug, or that the power adapter has vibrated partially out.