Oh the level of mis-information and myth! Special access codes? Yes, access to set-up modes is restricted,and for good reasons- most owners wouldn’t either want to,or understand the effects of changing installation configurations.
The problem isn’t that these codes are not available to the owner. The monopoly arises when these codes are only available to dealers or “authorised” shops.
That’s correct.
One can, sooner or later, get hold of the installation manual (IM). Garmin used to get their lawyers to shut down websites carrying IMs (I know of several who get the letters, so that stuff is all behind logins now) but they seem to have given up lately. Honeywell/King never bothered to enforce it. These IMs contain the keystrokes required to get into the config.
But for say the G500 they don’t contain all the info required to replace the unit and configure the replacement – so I am told by one dealer in the USA. There are extra codes involved. With those you have to use a Garmin dealer.
I would never install such a product because in Europe one can easily have an issue and get stuck because the nearest authorised dealer is hundreds or miles away, or the particular one which did the job one cannot use anymore due to some dispute.
Obviously this is just my point of view. Most people just “go with the flow” and don’t worry about it. But imagine you got a couple of boxes installed, say 15k each, and the company goes bust. You will be left with the used market, US Ebay, etc, and be glad that you got the IMs and either sort it yourself (if you know what you are doing, and with so many IFR pilots having a strong IT / electronics background many do) or can get a freelance avionics guy to sort it. And I am not talking about Garmin…
OK – I’ll bite.
In the case of every programmable avionics box other than the Garmin G500/600, the means of accessing the programming and maintenance pages is provided in the installation manuals – there are no ‘Secret’ codes. Occasionally a laptop is required but normally uses Hyperterm -no special software, except for some particular Honeywell systems. For the G500/600, the dealer has to purchase a ‘Dealer installation kit’ which includes an ‘unlock’ SD card used during set-up and maintenance.
To qualify as a dealer and approved installer and be granted legitimate access to the current maintenance data, the dealer must demonstrate capability, availability of trained staff (perhaps even attending compulsory manufacturer training at the dealer’so expense), possession of required test equipment, certification approvals, public liability insurance and guarantee to undertake warranty support at labour rates that may make it less than viable. Manufacturers don’t provide any level of exclusivity to dealers by geographic location of type of equipment they can sell so it’s the dealers risk if they choose to set up to support a particular type of equipment. Therefore it’s hardly a monopoly, but rather the manufacturer ensuring that the support network is suitably qualified to look after the product.
Is it really wrong for a dealer to invest in the hope of making some return for their effort, just as many aircraft owners do in their own businesses?
wigglyamp wrote:
Therefore it’s hardly a monopoly, but rather the manufacturer ensuring that the support network is suitably qualified to look after the product.
I think the issue is not that the manufacturer’s support network is equipped to ‘look after’ the product. The issue is that the manufacturer forces the owner to do business with their people, at his cost, and he has no choice even if he bought his property second hand and has no commitment, prior business or interest in the company that once upon a time bult and owned what is now his property.
Almost all consumer durable companies try to create this situation today, car manufacturers being another good example. As a result I tend to spend my money elsewhere, apartments and houses (and older planes) being a more secure investment for my money – the source of which is not derived from that business model 
A part of this debate is a bit like the old one about dongles (hardware protection keys for computer software).
If you buy a program, you should have a right to use it in perpetuity. Same if you buy a spanner. The vendors disagree and say you buy only a license, not the product. IMHO that is clearly wrong. If the dongle breaks, you lose that capability. If the vendor is no longer in business, or decides to not support that product anymore, and the dongle breaks, you are stuffed. I once lost the use of a USD 10,000 package (Viewlogic/LCA + Xilinx XACT) when one of the two (2!) dongles broke. Xilinx washed their hands of it (they offered me a new product, for 4 figures). Fortunately I found a Polish software guy (they don’t make them like that anymore, west of the Iron Curtain) who quickly (the software was graphical but ran under DOS 6.22) found the dongle code and patched it. He thought it was a brilliant piece of good for mankind and didn’t want any payment
Previously, I had a lot of correspondence with a Xilinx marketing guy whose explanation for why their new software would not open the older design files was along the lines of “you have to break some eggs to make an omelette”. And I needed that software to work “for ever” because the client came back 15 years later for the Mk II version of the product.
And 15 years is a perfectly reasonable time to run avionics for. My panel is now 14 years old and the only reason I would want to tear it apart would be for LPV, one day.
Obviously I have no issue with dealer investment in kit, and this can be significant (which is why e.g. almost nobody in Europe can do any useful work on an autopilot) but it is wrong for someone to retain control over hardware which I paid for in full, such that if it packs up I have to go back to the vendor or his representative.
Most of these practices are below the radar of the regulators but where it gets visible they eventually outlaw it – e.g. you retain your VW warranty even if you use a non-VW dealer to service the car, etc.
The other reason is if you get stuck on say some Greek island. You can probably get Easyjet (etc) back to the UK, and come out a week later with a replacement box. Sure you could ship the dealer’s guy to a Greek island, and this happens quite a lot with bizjets where AOG situations will get ugly unless fixed fast, but doing that in light GA is going to be awfully expensive.
Sure one could fly back with much of the panel INOP, but you might have to hand-fly it with a handheld GPS for nav.
Doesn’t the Premier I have Pro Line 21 (just as the IA or King Airs)? I don’t see how that has anything to do with it being glass or integrated. RC has the required hardware and there are other solutions available. Someone just has to do an STC which is true for standalone boxes as well (I think there is at least one available that uses a solution from Universal). I don’t know whether RC has an STC for Premier I, there should be one for King Airs. It’s true that traditional systems like Pro Line are very expensive (G5000, for example, is AFAIK much cheaper). Prices of used jets might be low, but prices of retrofits aren’t.
Apparently there is no WAAS for the Premier 1 and no ADS-B yet. But they’re working on it. The upgrade path for the 1A with Collins is today at $125K.
mh wrote:
EASA fee for a major change on an aircraft <2000kg is 290€ – 1290€ depending on complexity.
Yeah but this is only a (small) part of the certification cost. EASA will want to see lots of paperwork somebody has to prepare – and that somebody probably doesn’t do it out of altruism.
mh wrote:
Any autopilot depends on the flight dynamics of the aircraft and it should be fitted to that specific airframe.
Well yes. But that doesn’t explain why it should not be economically viable to certify a modern autopilot. There must be something in between the perfect but economically not viable perfect solution and the 1970s design with often wrong gain resistors installed and thus only marginally stable.
@Peter I find it interesting that Garmin offers a service where they will express ship you the replacement part if you need a dealer to install it. Unless the package includes a technician.
@AdamFrisch They use the same suite (at least AFAIK – the same displays, radios etc.). I guess the issue is approval for WAAS installation if indeed that wasn’t an option back then. And the solution from Universal should work as their (SBAS capable) FMS is part of it.
tomjnx wrote:
and that somebody probably doesn’t do it out of altruism.
Nope, we don’t, but that is the engineering I mentioned. To blame it on the EASA fees ist not correct. The necessary engineering to fit an Aspen or a similar standardised box into an R1180 should not take much more than one day for one engineer, if the design organisation has its papers straight. But I have no experience in avionic certification, so that’s a guesstimate. The installation of the box is similar whether or not the certification already exists.
If you just stay VFR, you might as well use CS-STAN and be happy.
tomjnx wrote:
But that doesn’t explain why it should not be economically viable to certify a modern autopilot.
Economically viable for who? I think we can agree that necessary engineering should be paid and the installation cost are pretty much the same with comparable systems. The EASA fees aren’t the big chunk. I am no avionics guy, but outside avionics most of the necessary certification work needs to be done anyway, so the regulatory overhead is smaller than many people consider them to be (unless you cut corners in the engineering of the product or do the work twice because you don’t design for certification).
