This is picture of my 'Servo Radar Altimeter". It is a 1972 model, and retailed for $13,000. I paid 50 dollars for it on ebay. It uses some bizarre power known as "26 volts AC, 400 HZ.", which is a real pain to create. Skinny found a schematic and we are working on this now, but it is being a pain in the butt. For a test, I connected it to my function generator set to 26 volts sine wave, and the darned thing worked! There are about 60 pins on the back, but you only need two to make it work as a regular ol' altimeter. It also has a Mode C encoder built in, good to 50,000 feet. A blind encoder alone costs around $800.I'm thinking of a 40K flight, thus the exciting purchase of this 50K altimeter. stay tuned for exciting updates on the new Skinny-400Hz supply!!
New update: I found a simple circuit that generates a standard square wave and then uses the 2nd stage of the op amp to convert to a sine wave. It is amazing, with only like 4 components, the sine looks incredible. So i have it built up for 400hz, and my friend Doug just pointed out a nice power op amp that should do the trick for cranking up the current sourcing capacity.
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