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KFC230 / Aerocruze

I may be wrong but I have not seen any evidence of HBK (Honeywell / Bendix-King) having any engineering expertise since around 2002. I know people who worked there and they tell me everybody left around then. Even source code for older products (e.g. KFC225) could not be re-built, even though it was known that it exists and where it is.

The stuff which HBK brought out since was done by subcontractors. Most of it is dead now e.g. KFD840. Getting subs to finish stuff is hard because they bill by the hour and do the absolute minimum, and the moment you take your eye off the ball they will work on somebody else’s stuff and drop you in the ***t. Here.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

That would also be my conclusion reading the thread, which is why I was wondering if anyone else had more recent experience.

EHRD, Netherlands

Reading back up this thread, I think only a fool would buy this product.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Curious if anyone has had further experience with this AP? One downside of the TB10 is that it’s not currently on the STC list for the GFC500, and STEC just dropped all their APs which were STC’d for the TB10. I would hope this would change in the future, but I’m always looking for alternatives if my Century IIB gives up the ghost. I did get it overhauled a couple years ago, and coupling with the GI-275 has really transformed it. But there’s a fellow TB pilot offloading a KFC150, so it got me thinking about this as a path to a digital AP.

EHRD, Netherlands

This was posted on a US site:

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Good call ! I guess people will use the altitude select extensively…

EBST, Belgium

I like the non-intuitive pitch switch – the function is upside down to what’s been removed!

Avionics geek.
Somewhere remote in Devon, UK.

TB20:


EBST, Belgium

I’ve seen that. Interesting, and scary! The “slide-in replacement” took 6 weeks and was a huge job. This report is also interesting:

I spoke with autopilots central. They had a aerocruze 230 to install… they messed around with it for months. I guess the engineers are in Europe for this system… they wouldn’t show up to conference calls, the unit was not working correctly, nobody could figure it out and they ended up removing the 230 and the airplane left with a new garmin autopilot.
It was explained that the marketing department decided when the autopilot was ready. Not the engineers.

Not yet ready for prime time, it would appear.

And it flies an ILS “like a drunken sailor”.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I’m not going to link to another forum, but on THE Beech Aircraft forum there is a topic about a guy who just installed an Aerocruz 230 (that’s the digital KFC150 !!) in his acft and just started testing it. It doesn’t look like a sales pitch. The goods and the bads.

EBST, Belgium
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