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Avidyne R9 (non GNS GPS) stops working with too many satellites?

I don’t think the R9 bug was the same as the one in the IFD540.

Many IFD540 and 440s are flying in the Cirrus fleet without problems.

This was a R9 bug.
For 8.33 issue, it was just a software issue where you had to manually switch to 8.33 setup when you were assigned with a 8.33 freq and manually re-switch to 25 when back to a 25 freq (no need for an 8.33 handheld radio even if I do have one as a backup).
For the GPS you had to reset one IFD and this was a pain….

Last Edited by Paolo at 02 Dec 17:26
LSGL

Really nice to spend lots of money on “certified” stuff that then shows ( xxxx ) bugs that then take forever to get sorted out. My HaiCom 204 have never complained at too many satellites. Who was wondering why certified GA is disappearing?

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

What do you expect? Technology that always works? All technology can and eventually WILL fail.
Certification cannot mean that a system will never fail or never have a bug, because that is impossible to achieve.

I expect better quality iow less bugs from certified devices with stellar prices than from “consumer grade” gear. Though yes, sure, shit does happen, I know, like so many professional IT’ers round here. But if an error pops up (as eventually there will, indeed), there needs to be a quick and dirty procedure available to get a work-around approved. The real fix still is required, but is then freed from time pressure.

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

That is what you get, usually.
I, for one, have a GNS430 in my Piper since 2001 … and it has not failed once. and I had very little problems with certifed avionics. But of course, anything can break.
Avidyne probably made a mistake here, but it looks like with all the regulations etc. it’s sometimes not possible to get the fix out quickly … Sxxx happens!

Really nice to spend lots of money on “certified” stuff that then shows ( xxxx ) bugs that then take forever to get sorted out. My HaiCom 204 have never complained at too many satellites. Who was wondering why certified GA is disappearing?

I have no inside information on Avidyne but have been in electronics manufacturing since 1978 and based on what I see my take on this is that they are dramatically under-resourced (meaning: very short of cash; I would probably not want to be one of their suppliers without doing extensive due diligence).

There are also indications that they contracted out some of their development work; that tends to result in slow bug fixing because a standard practice in contract R&D is to quote cheap to get the customer hooked and then bill a heavy daily rate for any mods in areas not tied up in the original spec, which in practice means mods in most areas because it is not in the contractor’s interest to work to a tight spec.

Avidyne like to blame the FAA and the whole certification landscape and this is all over their forum, implicitly, but for some mysterious reason Garmin (and even Honeywell with the “final, no this honestly is really final version of” the KSN770) manage to get their boxes certified without much drama.

Also, more specifically on the Navstar+Glonass/EGNOS (too many sats) and 8.33 issues, Avidyne does not have the benefit of a European base where testing can be organised. They have numerous dealers over here but (a) they are mostly installing TAS boxes and (b) dealers are quite fickle in their loyalties to the principal because they have to sell products which customers want. For example by the time I installed my 1st Sandel 3500 EHSI, Sandel were finished in the GA market here – simply because their dealers just dumped them. UK’s biggest shop had even sold the 3500 in their demo rig The products were and are great but the Aspen EFD1000 did to the low end “glass” market what Apple did to Nokia. You need a close relationship with somebody in Europe who will do testing for you and who will feed back bugs and keep their mouth shut about it, and do all this before the product is launched.

In the USA, Avidyne fed a number of IFD540 boxes to IFR pilots who were willing to put their planes on the Exp system just for uncert avionics testing, under a not really strict NDA. One of these was heavily posting progress reports on a Bonanza site. This never happened in Europe… there is no legal way to test uncert avionics here. You could put them in a homebuilt plane (and I am sure plenty of RV owners would be delighted to get a free $14k IFD540 in return for reporting bugs) but who will be flying these under realistic conditions i.e. high altitude long distance VFR, or even IFR in the Eurocontrol system? Well, I know of one homebuilt turboprop but he is the only one that pops up a fair bit on FR24 at FL280 So pre-cert testing in Europe is impossible without a lot of effort (probably CAA permissions). You would have to do it off the books i.e. with a tame pilot who probably works for your company… but Avidyne don’t have a base here anyway. They would have had to get a US N-reg homebuilt with a pre-cert IFD540 to fly to Europe (itself a massive deal – 30-40hrs’ flight) and that sort of undertaking was no doubt too expensive to even be considered. Now, if you buy two IFD540s and both have defects, they replace them only one at a time, obviously due to warranty work cash constraints!

Certification cannot mean that a system will never fail or never have a bug, because that is impossible to achieve.

These bugs indicate a lack of testing in a market segment which everybody in the business knows has significant differences (EGNOS, 8.33).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

That’s a too negative view on Avidyne, IMHO.
AFAIK Avidyne is doing ok financially. While they cannot really compete with Garmin they do have a good product portfolio and at the moment they are selling many IFD units, and many DFC90 autopilots aswell. Just look at the Cirrus base … The IFD440/540 are very successful there – and they got a lot of praise for it, because it is really nice than the Garmin equivalent. They DID have a problem with V1.0 of those units, but they are working fine now.

I’m a bit busy with other things right now but yes, I got the news :-)

Frequent travels around Europe

Flyer59 wrote:

I, for one, have a GNS430 in my Piper since 2001 … and it has not failed once. and I had very little problems with certifed avionics. But of course, anything can break.

They quality of older avionics equipment was much better then most new equipment. I have to reject a lot of new avionics, for issues the manufacture should have rejected for. Examples, buttons not responsive, inoperative COM’s, inoperative NAV’s, inoperative transponders, frequencies out of tolerance, squelch issues. Very frustrating. It seems more and more avionics are pushed out before finished.

Peter wrote:

So pre-cert testing in Europe is impossible without a lot of effort (probably CAA permissions).

They could do a lot of bench testing. After I had an issue with GPS approach, I decided I needed an GPS (over the air) simulator. When asking different manufacturers on their experiance with these kind of test equipment, it seems that these are not (widely?) used.

Another issue is production testing. For me it is clear that some manufacturers don’t do a 100% production testing.

JP-Avionics
EHMZ
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