I went with the Aspen 1000 PRO (and plan to upgrade to the MAX) in order to get the ability to have my KFC 200 be compatible with my GTN 750. It all works perfectly.
I have a KFC 150, but I didn't need anything in between for it to be compatible with my GTN 750... ???
No need to wait on the King thing and the Garmin G5 can't do anything that the Aspen can't do - and the Aspen works with legacy King AP's.
For us, the end game is likely a G500 TXi. However, our KI-256 has been circling the drain for quite a while now, so we're eager for a short-term solution. With an engine that's already past TBO*, and having just dropped $40K+ into the panel a little over a year ago, we're not currently planning to do the TXi this year... But if the KI-256 dies, it makes much more sense for us to put in a G5 + adapter because the G5 can be reused later as a backup to the TXi, and it can be used to drive a GFC500, which is also on our wish list.
* I can't tell you how many times people have told me that an IO-550 will never make TBO. They're full of crap. We don't flog it, we run it at 65% LOP, and it runs great. I think we're at 2,030 hours or so, so far.
I spent alot of time at the various vendor booths at last year's Osh Kosh. The King booth was a joke. I don't even know what they call their "competitive product" that goes up against the GTN 750 or for that matter Avidyne IFD series units. The KI 300 looks to be just as irrelevant.
They probably think it's the KSN 770, which has an awful user interface, no way to connect to an EFB and no plans for that in the future. It's pretty much worthless.
I do like my 20 year old KFC 200. That AP works and works well. But that is the only King panel product left in my airplane. The whole panel was King up until two months ago. No more.
Yeah, our KFC 150 is a great autopilot, when it works. We were chasing gremlins in it for several years, though, and the last straw was when we were quoted $9600 for an overhaul exchange trim servo. Luckily, the component-level wizard at our avionics shop managed to resurrect ours from the dead... But we're *done*. If the KFC quits again, it's gone. The GFC 500 should be certified for our M20R in the next couple of months, and as good as the KFC 150 was before the latest generation of autopilots that came out in the last couple of years, it doesn't compare to the new GFCs.
Why anyone would voluntarily install King equipment at this point is beyond me. How many KSN770s are out there?
I'm a bit of an avionics geek, and I look at panels of planes a lot. I have yet to see a single one.
Having flown with parcels in the back, although on a smaller scale, todays mostly air filled packages cause you to bulk out way before you max out weight wise in my experience.
Especially Amazon. I just got a 10-pack of CR2032 button cells that take up a small fraction of a standard envelope, and it came in a box that was about a foot square and 6" high.
