For example a in automotive terms my premium british manufactured 6 year old (£64k new) saloon car was off the road for 5 weeks earlier this year whilst the company decided whether to produce another batch of active electro hydraulic engine mounts.A lovely car given its complexity I don,t see it making Beaulieu motor mueum!
This is a sign of a non-competitive market. Time for built-in obsolescence.
I have some avionics that is from the 80s and still working.
I’m not a Garmin fan at all and look to replace my GNS530W at some point.
Peter seems to me that modern manufacturers don,t look to support rapidly changing technology as much as in the past.I was flying a warrior yesterday fitted with one of the earliest KN430 at least ten years old if I remember correctly I,m told its no longer repairable.Happy to be told otherwise! Stampe
The GNS430 came out c. 1999 and Garmin stopped servicing it quite recently (2 years ago?). However if you have had one since 1999 and it packs up now, you will have had 17 years out of it, which is pretty good. I got 15 years out of a Toyota Celica…
And if you want a drop-in replacement, there are plenty on Ebay. You can’t drop it in officially into a G-reg (no way to get an EASA-1 form if Garmin no longer service the unit; I don’t know if anybody else ever had EASA 145 authority to do it) but in practice this goes on all the time; loads of people are dropping in ex-US-Ebay ADFs, radios, etc. In the UK the serial numbers are not checked (someone posted here they are checked in Germany at every Annual if you want the IFR certificate). Then there is the hair dryer method, whereby warmed up serial number labels magically jump from one box to another but nobody can explain the physics behind it. I have never done that (never needed to; being N-reg makes it a lot easier to be legal) but it is commonly done.
And I believe there is a legal process whereby a GNS430 (etc) removed “working” from a G-reg can go into another G-reg. Maybe somebody can confirm the exact rule? I know we have at least two 145 shops here.
I think the Garmin GTN boxes will follow a similar path to the GNS boxes i.e. you can expect say 10-15 years’ factory-service life, plus however long it lasts after that (could last a further 10-20 years; a GPS should not just stop working unless somebody pulls the knobs off, assuming it is hangared). Garmin are not going to go bust or de facto go bust (e.g. pull out of certain product ranges) which is more than I would say for any of the other players e.g. Avidyne who are sadly very clearly severely struggling financially.
Look at Honeywell suddenly dropping the KFD840 after a short time in the market, and IMHO they are likely to drop the KSN770 pretty soon since it is obviously not selling. But hey I could be wrong; somebody there might decide to resource-enhance (doing my MBA now) their GA division and recruit somebody who has seen one of these.
The other angle is the “regulatory life” but a GTN box will do everything currently around including stuff on the horizon. If you get stuff which can do ADS-B that should take you to when this becomes mandatory for IFR (like Mode S, it prob99 never will be for VFR OCAS) which may be c. 2022-2025.
This is a sign of a non-competitive market. Time for built-in obsolescence.
I have some avionics that is from the 80s and still working.
I’m not a Garmin fan at all and look to replace my GNS530W at some point.
Of course; these firms run their cash cows for as long as they can. But a GNS430W will be good “for ever”. It does LPV. It doesn’t do airway name entry but is that a big deal, worth say 20k plus all the hassle?
I basicly agree with Peter, and to put it in a nutshell if the box has good sales it will be worth supporting and if the manufacture fails to do so someone else will ( ie trig with the King transponder slide in replacement ).
Stampe.
How old is your Robin ? We might have a few issues that we can tackle more economicly if the aircraft are of the same age.
Stampe wrote:
I was flying a warrior yesterday fitted with one of the earliest KN430 at least ten years old if I remember correctly I,m told its no longer repairable
Some of the older GNS series are no longer supported, that is correct.
Peter wrote:
And if you want a drop-in replacement, there are plenty on Ebay. You can’t drop it in officially into a G-reg (no way to get an EASA-1 form if Garmin no longer service the unit;
Why??? This is totally incorrect. The unit is no longer supported as some components have become obsolete. You can still have the unit bench tested, verified and issued an EASA Form 1.
You can still have the unit bench tested, verified and issued an EASA Form 1.
That was my question. Can firms other than Garmin itself issue a Form 1 for a GNS430? The MM for the 430 is almost devoid of information.
The older GNS430 (28V) is no longer repairable. However, they are not scrap if they fail, as Garmin offer a fixed-price upgrade to a 430W (dual voltage). Garmin forward-purchased sufficient parts prior to end of production to guarantee at least 13 years support. Therefore, as it went out of production in 2013,the life of some units will be at least 26 years, and lots will go on much longer as they’re incredibly reliable.
In the case of issuing a Form 1 for an early unit, this is possible by a Part 145 who is removing it in a serviceable condition from an aircraft with a current C of A. There needs to be an approved procedure in the company’s MOE. It normally requires carrying out a functional check against the installation/maintenance manual, doing a paperwork check to ensure any mandatory requirements (ADs) have been addressed etc.
wigglyamp wrote:
In the case of issuing a Form 1 for an early unit, this is possible by a Part 145 who is removing it in a serviceable condition from an aircraft with a current C of A. There needs to be an approved procedure in the company’s MOE. It normally requires carrying out a functional check against the installation/maintenance manual, doing a paperwork check to ensure any mandatory requirements (ADs) have been addressed etc.
Sure, but one could also have a unit bench tested.
“Sure, but one could also have a unit bench tested.”
You could have one bench-tested if the workshop has it on their Part145 C rating and access to the bench maintenance manuals. I don’t believe Garmin have ever released the bench repair data to the field, but could be wrong. Garmin won’t bench test and release an original 28v 430 unit themselves any more.
wigglyamp wrote:
You could have one bench-tested if the workshop has it on their Part145 C rating and access to the bench maintenance manuals. I don’t believe Garmin have ever released the bench repair data to the field, but could be wrong.
The maintenance manual (board level) also offers instructions for board replacement, calibration, alignment and testing of the complete unit.
