But it’s $5K.
Does it actually exist?
A great idea but about 10-15 years too late 
I wish it luck. These are great radios. People in Europe have been replacing the 155A with a 165A/8.33 but that’s not cheap; I paid a few k for mine.
Silvaire wrote:
But it’s $5K.
Actually less than that, and a bit cheaper than Garmin GNC255 and Trig TX56.
Peter wrote:
Does it actually exist?
We’ll see. Aircraft Spruce has it on their web site, but only for “pre-order”. Their price is USD 4230.
There is a lot of value in a slide-in replacement. That’s why people pay ~4k for a KX165A/8.33 rather than do what every proper owner is expected by the industry to do (rip the whole panel out and spend 50k on Garmin glass 
). “Surgical” changes deliver the required functionality with minimal technical risk, easy reversion if it doesn’t work, and they avoid the risk inherent in locating a good installer. So this is a great idea.
My concern is that it doesn’t exist. HBK lost all their in-house tech c. 2003 and all boxes since are either subcontracted (KSN770, KFD840, etc, with according to an inside contact some $50M poured by Honeywell into the KSN770 only to generate almost zero sales) or simply badged (everything else).
Does anyone have the IM? I’d like to see the back of it and specifically how they deal with the A / non-A slide-in aspect.
I thought about developing exactly this product about 10 years ago. Obviously getting it certified would be a major job; you need “connections” to get that done. Technically it was an interesting idea. One would use standard RF tech to get down to a few MHz and then do everything with DSP, possibly with an FPGA. I used to do ASIC (custom chip) design consultancy and used Xilinx FPGAs extensively but got out of that many years ago because the tools kept changing so a lot of time was wasted. So doing with a normal “DSP” would be preferred. I would have also made it IP68 sealed, to protect from moisture which is the biggest avionics killer in GA. The current KX165A (I’ve repaired a few; the GS receiver is easy to blow up – here and here) is absolutely jam-packed with analog/RF stuff; there is barely room to stick a finger in. Must be quite a production challenge.
I know what their next announcement will be: a KLN94 slide-in box which does LPV
I know what their next announcement will be: a KLN94 slide-in box which does LPV
Nah, my money is on a KNS80 slide-in replacement.
Aircraft Spruce has it on their web site, but only for “pre-order”. Their price is USD 4230.
Which would be around $4700 with sales tax and US delivery as applicable. I think for most potential buyers fixing what they have or replacing it with a used identical unit will be the path chosen. They are ‘out there’ as a result of panel upgrades. Few potential buyers need 2280 channel (so-called 8.33) radios – only those in Europe as far as I understand. So this is going to be a low volume product, and I think it’s priced as such to recover the development cost over a limited number of sales. Nav Comm radios are not exactly the coming thing and I think most buyers will work with what’s already there or do something completely different.
I have a different radio but a few years ago bought a spare for $400 IIRC. Naturally that means my existing radio has given no trouble since It’s still nice to have a spare because it means I’m set up for the duration.
