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Bendix-King discontinues EFB " myWingMan " ( app )

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it is most likely that all that needs doing is the contacts in the display cleaning.

I am sure that is correct. There is a repair shop where I am based and they do this all day long. They usually fix it by repairing the flimsy connections between the display and the PCB. The cause is normally vibration, or water ingress eating the PCB.

The display itself is, I think, a piece of evacuated glass. I recall using such displays in the early 1980s, but they were green. We drove them with a Rockwell chip – Aaaaah those were the days before software was devalued by C++ and eventually completely degraded by java

My estimate has been that Honeywell have made over $10M from sales of KFC225 servos, over the past decade, to replace the burnt out ones. On some airframes, e.g. the Caravan or the TB20/21, the servo failure rate has been above 100% i.e. multiple failures.

Some of the stuff one sees in a repair shop beggars belief. I see radio gear there which is from the 1960s, but people still fly with it. Often, I suspect, the same person whose £100k car in parked in the airport car park.

McDermott & Bull

In relation to Honeywell, that is like this

Last Edited by Peter at 09 Mar 22:37
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

by the way … who wants to change his position? BK is looking for a new Vice President of Marketing & Product Management

Job description

McDermott & Bull is proud to exclusively represent BendixKing in its search for its next Vice President of Marketing and Product Management.

Flying behind BendixKing avionics is part and parcel of flying general aviation aircraft. BendixKing has a legacy of extremely high quality products which revolutionized the general aviation industry. Steeped in tradition, it is BendixKing’s existence, dating back to 1911, which has changed the way cockpits are designed and the creature comforts which have become second nature to pilots across the globe.

This is an opportunity for a passionate pilot (a passion for flying cannot be overemphasized), who truly wants to “move the needle” on the cockpit. BendixKing is a consumer products company – with the consumer being the highly skilled pilot – whose mission is to make the cockpit intuitive by truly listening to the voice of the customer when designing products that suit their needs, as well as to innovate products that pilots don’t yet know they can’t live without. The passionate pilot for this role will be granted the opportunity to create products that they themselves see as necessary for the evolution of general aviation – a term BendixKing calls “ideation” (idea-generation).

posted 5 days ago on www.linkedin.com

Last Edited by nobbi at 09 Mar 22:35
EDxx, Germany

Achimha……… I suspect it is not the display that has failed on your KX155/165, it is most likely that all that needs doing is the contacts in the display cleaning.

I am going to take a guess that your radio shop is more interested in selling displays than doing a quick repair as the Proffit is far greater it selling you the parts.

One of the hardest things to do in this business is to find a good radio shop.

The people representing Bendix King at AERO 2013 were also outside contractors hired for the job.

I bet their cashflow is from replacing KX155 displays, there is nothing as certain as these displays lose digits and go blank one day. In the KX165 they perfected the design in that they go immediately blank before losing single segments. In both cases, they charge like $500 for a $10 replacement part. I spent €1000 on KX display replacements in 2013.

I’d shut down GA activities if I were them

They did that c. 1999.

Their later developments could have been done by one bloke working from home – seriously.

The KSN770 was done by a contractor who bodged the software and it could not be certified. So they dropped it – until Aspen had a go at it and re-did it.

The KFD840 was done by an outside firm too, which discontinued it early 2013.

Their new Mode S transponder is a Trig box with a modified front panel.

Before I got into flying I was turning out electronics products, of comparable complexity (written in assembler, mostly) at several times that rate.

Mywingman was just another Ipad app which a competent IOS programmer could knock up in a few weeks – assuming the mapdata was available from somewhere (Jepp?). Same as JeppFD-VFR really.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Wonder what they will present at AERO this year then, last year it was 90% myWingMan

I’d shut down GA activities if I were them.

I will start with the KN62, I have owned two of these the first one was recoverd from an aircraft that was written off due to a gear up landing and gave no problems during the seven years I owned the aircraft. The second one was fitted to my aircraft and has worked since 1994, the only maintenance it has has was the contacts on the display were cleaned in about 2009.

The KX 165 & 155 installed at the same time as the DME worked faultlessly until removed to fit two KX165A’s in 2005 (for 8.33) one of these has had to go back to king to be fixed.

The KR89 ADF & KT73 transponder have worked faultlessly since being fitted.

So the BK reliability record is not bad over the years.

I have no experience of the BK products with the LCD display so can’t comment directly on these.

The only thing I will say is that my aircraft is always kept inside and all the boxes that have provision for cooling are connected to a cooling fan.

Last Edited by A_and_C at 09 Mar 09:21

BK build quality isn’t as great IMO as some people think. I have two KX125, where after 10 years LCD segments start to fail left and right. I was quoted rougly 2k per device just for the spare parts. We need to replace them anyway due to 8.33k, but still…

Also, I recently opened a KN62 DME, the switch construction doesn’t look very trustworthy. In fact the reason for opening it were intermittent problems that seemed to go away after cleaning the switch. Furthermore, the circuit seems to be such that there’s a possibility of receiving the wrong frequency should the switch have contact problems without the pilot knowing (except when listening to the DME ident, but how many people do this consistently?)

LSZK, Switzerland

Bendix / King have lost the GA plot from being the undoubted leader in GA avionics since the first KX170 was built in the 1960’s through the late 1970’s when they introduced the ultra reliable KX155.

Then they started to loose the plot when the management failed to take the advice of the product development team who wanted to build a GPS, VOR & ILS unit to fit into the same space as a KX170. The development guys had such faith in the idea that they quit and moved up the road to start Garmin.

I have a totaly Bendix / King aircraft that is about get a big Avionic upgrade and none of the new kit will be BK as I have lost faith in the company’s will to support the GA sector even in the medium term, I want to be sure that my new Avionic upgrade will have support for the next twenty years and Garmin is the only avionics company that looks like it can do so.

I have no complaints about all the BK equipment that I have owned, infact it has been very reliable, but I guess most of the GA community think as I do and have taken their business elsewhere.

As for BK’s Garmin GNS competitor it is twenty years late and to use Peters favorite term………… Vaporware !

The withdrawal of the wingman product is just another nail in the coffin of the one time dominance that BK had in the GA sector.

I found this in my mail today:

Dear myWingMan subscriber,

BendixKing appreciates your business and confidence in us as your EFB provider. We have high standards for our products and want our customer experience to be the best one possible. After much reflection on the myWingMan product we do not feel that it fully represents the value and quality that BendixKing provides to pilots worldwide on a daily basis. As such, we regretfully inform you that we are ending product support for myWingMan, effective immediately.

Please note that no further product or chart data updates will be available, and as such, suggest that you uninstall myWingMan to prevent the inadvertent use of expired data. This is a difficult decision for us but allows BendixKing to focus on providing a better EFB product at a future date

If you have a paid subscription for myWingMan data updates, you will receive a full refund equal to any subscription fees paid. Please contact us either via our toll-free number …

I found their georeferenced IFR approach charts (Seattle Avionics) in regard to a cost-benefit analysis very good. Other elements were not too sophisticated and not able to withstand the strong US rivals like ForeFlight.

Last Edited by nobbi at 08 Mar 10:51
EDxx, Germany
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