Can anyone offer a comparison of the KSN770 and the IFD540? They seem to have similar capabilities.
Easy. They are very comparable. Neither exist.
I wrote a brief review in the ABS Magazine of the KSN770 regarding its announcement at Oshkosh in July/August of 2007, planned availability of 2008. That was over 6 years ago and still waiting. Well actually, I am not waiting. If and when it ever becomes real, I will look at it again.
No reply whatsoever from Sarasota Avionics about whether the advert is for a real product…
Peter
The word on the street is that King are making the 770 from a very high grade Unobtainium.
Oddly enough there is a precedent for avionics dealers “stocking” stuff which doesn’t exist beyond some exhibition mockups. The KSN770 was listed at South East Aerospace back in about 2008.
What is different about Sarasota is they list a price for it.
Peter
I just got a Facebook message from Bendix/King offering a trade in for my old avionics, one of the new units they are offering is the KSN770 so may be we will see this mythical unit held in captivity at an Avionic dealer soon.
I just got a Facebook message from Bendix/King
Clearly there is an entire parallel universe out there which I was completely unaware of 
What I do know is that if you are good looking, have 1000 “friends” on f***book of which 500 are female, and your relationship status changes from “in relationship” to “single” then you should be “back in business” pretty fast.
If I make B/King my friend, will they reinstate the perpetual warranty which one of their employees gave me on the KFC225, before he retired?
But seriously, if the KSN770 does exist, and is just around the corner, why don’t the dealers reply to questions about delivery?
What is more serious is that they actually shipped some KFD840 boxes, before dropping the product. I know of one which was sold to a UK customer. I can’t verify this now but apparently he was told, post-installation, that it was certified VFR-only. That wasn’t a cheap box – of the order of $15k, plus installation.
I think that they have had a few problems with customer support in the past, about five years back I had a KX165A pack up, the unit had to go back to the USA and the news was bad………. It was scrap.
Now for the big problem they said that a new box was going to take NINE MONTHS to deliver !!!!!!!!!
At that moment I had a major SOH failure! I emailed just about every manager in Bendix/King, my local KING dealer was very good he pushed the issue as far as he could but also gave me a few pointers on who he thought would be the best people to aim my protests at.
My main threat was that if they did not properly support current units I would make it known in the aviation press that owners could not trust Bendix/King if you were relying on your aircraft for any type of business and I made it clear that this news would go out to all the aviation press on both sides of the Atlantic as well as any Internet forum I could find.
The depth of my wrath took about seven days to filter up to the top of the Honeywell tree of which Bendix/king is part and the reaction was remarkable, my scrap unit suddenly got fixed and at a very reasonable price, but I should not have to go through that song and dance to get proper product support.
I think there is now a new broom sweeping through Bendix/King and they have woken up to the fact that they have to fight Garmin for this market and can’t look back and use the reputation for reliability and quality that they had thirty years back. Over the next year or so we will see if the new kit they say they are bringing to the market is up to the job. I hope it is as I don’t like the Garmin dominance of the market and if the KSN770 does what it says on the tin it is the box for me.
That experience resonates entirely with mine, A&C.
I have always found Honeywell’s customer service to be atrocious. They washed their hands of the KFC225, having earlier promised me a warranty which would continue as long as the servos kept packing up.
A few years ago I came across two KC225 autopilot computers, at South East Aerospace, Florida. They were overhauled and were going at the fantastic price of $500 each. Apparently Honeywell had just announced the discontinuation of the KFC225 manufacture, so SEA were getting shot of their stock. OBVIOUSLY I bought both of them
I then took them to the one avionics shop in the UK who was able to calibrate them (using the pitch and roll trimpots which stupidly are in the side of the unit and the process thus requires a special $1500 bus extender) for my KI256 horizon.
One was set up fine but the other, about 30 mins after power-on, showed a faulty segment in all the display digits.
I got the avionics shop to take photos and write a letter supporting this finding, and I contacted SE Aerospace about it. Unfortunately by then it was out of their (very short in this case) warranty so I tried Honeywell next.
They said it passed their factory test so could not be faulty. This went on and on, They refused to accept the photos and the letter as authentic, even though they came from probably their biggest UK dealer (and I would say the only UK firm that actually understood these avionics, at the time).
Eventually I pulled the top card which was a contact in Prague, where I was born and where their Euro HQ is/was, where I “knew” somebody, and magically I got another overhauled unit sent. However I think I spent my whole capital on that because that guy no longer returns emails 
Since then I have gone 50/50 with another KFC225 owner and we bought that bus extender.
Fortunately normally one doesn’t have to deal with Honeywell directly, and more fortunately most of their old 1990s products (which is more or less all that is for sale today) are of good quality.
Got a reply:
As we understand it, the KSN-770 has not been certified yet and is not available at this time. We have no information as to, if and or when, it will be available it and we have not seen the installation manual.
(I asked for the KSN770 IM. Oddly enough I do have the KFD840 IM in my collection; another dead product).
