New Bendix - King Boxes

I agree about the 480. I'm sure it survived the merger to get a WAAS box in the marketplace. I hope that the 430/530-series continue to adopt the best of the 480 in terms of features.

I thought that GMX200 RADAR version had a whole list of compatible units not just Garmin's.
 
jwkidd said:
I know I am coming late on this one but..

The King stuff is not near as impressive to me as the Aspen stuff IF they can truly integrate with existing panels. If they deliver, the G600 will not near as compelling. I love the modular approach tot he aspen stuff.
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I'm with you on this John. The King graphics were painful and the poor quality was explained to me by the King rep this way, "We do a lot of demos in a day and the software is probably tired." I'm not making this up.

The Aspen box looks fantastic and they'll hit a home run if it really works like they say it does. It was my pick for best new product at the show.
 
gibbons said:
I'm with you on this John. The King graphics were painful and the poor quality was explained to me by the King rep this way, "We do a lot of demos in a day and the software is probably tired." I'm not making this up.

The Aspen box looks fantastic and they'll hit a home run if it really works like they say it does. It was my pick for best new product at the show.
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Apparently you're not the only one to think so. They're reporting sales of $1.5M (MILLION) at the show: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=0268391f-0d9f-41bc-b5e4-8ad425de33e0&
 
gibbons said:
I'm with you on this John. The King graphics were painful and the poor quality was explained to me by the King rep this way, "We do a lot of demos in a day and the software is probably tired." I'm not making this up.

The Aspen box looks fantastic and they'll hit a home run if it really works like they say it does. It was my pick for best new product at the show.
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I agree 100%. It's almost as if I was with you looking at them!!!
 
gibbons said:
I'm with you on this John. The King graphics were painful and the poor quality was explained to me by the King rep this way, "We do a lot of demos in a day and the software is probably tired." I'm not making this up.

The Aspen box looks fantastic and they'll hit a home run if it really works like they say it does. It was my pick for best new product at the show.
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Yeah, "tired software" is the root of all kinds of issues....
 
I'm really excited about the KSN770. From what I can gather, it (finally) brings some real FMS functionality to light airplanes. I like how one can easily create a hold anywhere in the flight plan and specify the inbound leg, length/time, etc. The entire flight planning component looks much more advanced and intuitive than the 430/530. And it can display onboard WX radar, XM weather, TAWS, approach charts....

Price isn't bad at $14k, either.

-Felix
 
sba55 said:
I'm really excited about the KSN770. From what I can gather, it (finally) brings some real FMS functionality to light airplanes. I like how one can easily create a hold anywhere in the flight plan and specify the inbound leg, length/time, etc. The entire flight planning component looks much more advanced and intuitive than the 430/530. And it can display onboard WX radar, XM weather, TAWS, approach charts....

Price isn't bad at $14k, either.

-Felix
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Yep, they added some real functionality to that box, puts the 530 to shame.
 
Zackly how much weight should be placed on the ability to create holding patterns? Is that ability something to get excited about?

sba55 said:
I'm really excited about the KSN770. From what I can gather, it (finally) brings some real FMS functionality to light airplanes. I like how one can easily create a hold anywhere in the flight plan and specify the inbound leg, length/time, etc. The entire flight planning component looks much more advanced and intuitive than the 430/530. And it can display onboard WX radar, XM weather, TAWS, approach charts....

Price isn't bad at $14k, either.

-Felix
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wabower said:
Zackly how much weight should be placed on the ability to create holding patterns? Is that ability something to get excited about?
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It is if you fly on VATSIM :D or if you fly in the lower flight levels in the NE. I've gotten holds in NY airspace flying higher/faster airplanes that I never used to get when I was down below 10000. They aren't long holds, but I've gotten spun around for sequencing a bit.
 
There is a downside to buying from relatively unknown manufacturers or even a new product from an well known existing manufacturer. Should that company go belly up, you have no support at all for your very pricey equipment. Even a well known manufacturer who discontinues one of these products, may or may not continue providing support, but it is pretty much a guarantee that you will never get any upgrades.

The other thing that bothers me about all of these "high" priced items, comes from my talking to an avionics guy. I asked him why this stuff was so darn expensive. His answer was simple: " That is what the market will bear."

In other words, it is us, the customers, who are setting these prices, not the sellers.

Many products that have ten times the computing capacity and much more expansive displays, such as home computers, laptop computers, even television sets, do not come close to the prices we are paying for even the simplest products for our aircraft.

John
 
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wabower said:
Zackly how much weight should be placed on the ability to create holding patterns? Is that ability something to get excited about?
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What is worth getting excited about is the ability to plug in V1,V12,V134,V7,V18 and having the box plug in all the waypoints and intersections on that route for you. Especially handy when you come in over the mountains into the SoCal basin and are given an ammendment that reads like that and each of those V-airways has doglegs in it. That has been one of my main qualms with the Garmin boxes, I came smoking into the basin on descent and was given one of those type of clearances to get into LGB with the route taking mybe 15 minutes to landing. I looked at the chart and figured there was no way to dial in over 20 waypoints, so a 530 and MX20, over $30k worth of gear was exactly as functional as a Kx170b that you can get on ebay for under $1000, because I had to treat it the same way, dial in each freq and cross ref with the SL-30. When I asked Garmin at SnF when they were planning on putting V-Airways into the database, the guy plainly said "We're not going to, if we did, how will we get people to buy the next generation of boxes". I'm pretty much boycotting Garmin for that.
 
Ah - BS. The certification costs for a piece of avionics are significant, and there's a finite market. The liability costs for anything related to aviation is huge. Those two things added to the cost of manufacturing set the floor for prices. I don't think the margin on avionics manufacturing is very high, except POSSIBLY for the handheld portables that don't require significant certification or come with significant liability. But if it's panel mounted and used for IFR, it's got significant and costly hoops to jump through.
 
John Baker said:
There is a downside to buying from relatively unknown manufacturers or even a new product from an well known existing manufacturer. Should that company go belly up, you have no support at all for your very pricey equipment. Even a well known manufacturer who discontinues one of these products, may or may not continue providing support, but it is pretty much a guarantee that you will never get any upgrades.

The other thing that bothers me about all of these "high" priced items, comes from my talking to an avionics guy. I asked him why this stuff was so darn expensive. His answer was simple: " That is what the market will bear."

In other words, it is us, the customers, who are setting these prices, not the sellers.

Many products that have ten times the computing capacity and much more expansive displays, such as home computers, laptop computers, even television sets, do not come close to the prices we are paying for even the simplest products for our aircraft.

John
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Bendix King/Honeywell isn't going anywhere soon. As to cost, yeah, they're a bit high, but considering the market size and regulatory hurdles to jump through the costs of which can only be spread through a limited market, they aren't out of the realm of reasonable. If they aren't allowed a reasonable profit, then they will have to discontinue and your service scenario comes true. Some of the manufacturers have a price point their dealers must abide by, so when shopping for the units, you shop on the install costs because that is where the dealers have room to bargain. As for price vs. TVs, I recently put a top end Pioneer plasma on a boat, price tag $12,300.
 
Henning said:
As for price vs. TVs, I recently put a top end Pioneer plasma on a boat, price tag $12,300.
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I don't even want to think what that would cost for an airplane instead of a boat. I reckon you guys are right though, if it's for navigation in our three dimensional world, there are many hoops to somersault through to make it legal. I know a marine Garmin is a whole lot cheaper than a flight Garmin.

After making my above post, I also got to thinking that, and I am guessing here, these aviation products are mostly manufactured right here in our own country. I think that since most of us earn American wages, we shouldn't mind paying American wages now and then.

Every so often I will get a State department employee in my store who have been living in countries like Bangladesh and such. I give them my prices and they about go into cardiac arrest, talk about sticker shock.

John
 
Henning said:
What is worth getting excited about is the ability to plug in V1,V12,V134,V7,V18 and having the box plug in all the waypoints and intersections on that route for you. Especially handy when you come in over the mountains into the SoCal basin and are given an ammendment that reads like that and each of those V-airways has doglegs in it. That has been one of my main qualms with the Garmin boxes, I came smoking into the basin on descent and was given one of those type of clearances to get into LGB with the route taking mybe 15 minutes to landing. I looked at the chart and figured there was no way to dial in over 20 waypoints, so a 530 and MX20, over $30k worth of gear was exactly as functional as a Kx170b that you can get on ebay for under $1000, because I had to treat it the same way, dial in each freq and cross ref with the SL-30. When I asked Garmin at SnF when they were planning on putting V-Airways into the database, the guy plainly said "We're not going to, if we did, how will we get people to buy the next generation of boxes". I'm pretty much boycotting Garmin for that.
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No kidding. It seems ludicrous to me to have $000s of dollars in avionics and still need to pull out the paper chart to enter the course. I find it hard to believe that including such functionality in a 430 would be that difficult. I agree though - we'll never see it. They're milking the 430/530 hard 'til the last $ is out of that market before they bring out the new/improved stuff. B/Ks new box may encourage that. I'm not impressed with the B/K box though - very cluttered presentation. It may function great, but there's so much noise on the screen!
 
John Baker said:
I don't even want to think what that would cost for an airplane instead of a boat. I reckon you guys are right though, if it's for navigation in our three dimensional world, there are many hoops to somersault through to make it legal. I know a marine Garmin is a whole lot cheaper than a flight Garmin.
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It does a whole lot less as well, no nav/com in it, and by the time you hook up a radar and sonar to the latest Garmin marine units, you are well north of $10k.
 
flyersfan31 said:
No kidding. It seems ludicrous to me to have $000s of dollars in avionics and still need to pull out the paper chart to enter the course. I find it hard to believe that including such functionality in a 430 would be that difficult. I agree though - we'll never see it. They're milking the 430/530 hard 'til the last $ is out of that market before they bring out the new/improved stuff. B/Ks new box may encourage that. I'm not impressed with the B/K box though - very cluttered presentation. It may function great, but there's so much noise on the screen!
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You can tune the "noise" to whatever level you like though. The guy at OSH (he recognized me from SnF and wanted to show me the implementation of some of my suggestions) ran me through the box, pretty damned sweet. Did everything I wanted it to (although that particular unit had a few preproduction glitches) and I found it very intuitive. I was harping on him about the keypad though from the higher end unit and he said they were working on it and if it wasn't with the original release, it would be able to plug into a USB port on the front. We'll see.... The thing I liked best about the B/K product though was the people they had representing it. Garmins representation left a lot to be desired.
 
Henning said:
What is worth getting excited about is the ability to plug in V1,V12,V134,V7,V18 and having the box plug in all the waypoints and intersections on that route for you.
Click to expand...

My GNS480 (which Garmin bought along with UPSAT and then killed once they copied the WAAS technology into their 430/530 line) does that and it allows you to program a hold at any point in space on any radial to that point. And it will direct an autopilot with GPSS (or a "manual pilot for that matter) to enter and fly that hold. IIRC BK claims the 770 will allow a flight plan to be created graphically, but I haven't seen that demonstrated yet.
 
Getting that clearance should be all the evidence you need that you aren't living right. Just tell them you don't have time for all that **** and to give you a vector somewhere you can fly to, and to save the tape.

My impression is that most light airplanes fly far more short trips than long trips, so entering the fixes isn't that big a deal. It was nice to have the shortcut capability on the G-V, but keystrokes are still necessary for flight plans that don't download directly from AFIS. A few more or a few less isn't material in the big scheme of things.

Whoever comes out with the best keypad or automated flight plan entry system should be the winner in the next generation of panel-mounts. Based on BK's long hiatus from meaningful participation in the GA market, my money is on Garmin. I'm guessing that Garmin is watching BK's new product introduction, just waiting to pounce with their own new product line that will drown them--again.

BK has no-one to blame but themselves. If they hadn't suffered from acute cranial insertion and abandoned the GA market segment they once dominated (when the parent turned GA division over to the Global group in Phoenix) Garmin wouldn't have had the opportunity to beat them like a borrowed mule and replace them as the industry leader.

I like Garmin. Everything I have bought has worked, and if a component broke (power and XM cord connectors) they sent me a new one at no cost. A good friend recently retired as head of one of the largest BK marketing divisions. Even though he's collecting pension checks, he doesn't have much good to say about their new product line, and is openly skeptical of these new boxes, thinking it will take some time to get them to perform reliably. I'm taking his advice.

Henning said:
What is worth getting excited about is the ability to plug in V1,V12,V134,V7,V18 and having the box plug in all the waypoints and intersections on that route for you. Especially handy when you come in over the mountains into the SoCal basin and are given an ammendment that reads like that and each of those V-airways has doglegs in it. That has been one of my main qualms with the Garmin boxes, I came smoking into the basin on descent and was given one of those type of clearances to get into LGB with the route taking mybe 15 minutes to landing. I looked at the chart and figured there was no way to dial in over 20 waypoints, so a 530 and MX20, over $30k worth of gear was exactly as functional as a Kx170b that you can get on ebay for under $1000, because I had to treat it the same way, dial in each freq and cross ref with the SL-30. When I asked Garmin at SnF when they were planning on putting V-Airways into the database, the guy plainly said "We're not going to, if we did, how will we get people to buy the next generation of boxes". I'm pretty much boycotting Garmin for that.
Click to expand...
 
lancefisher said:
My GNS480 (which Garmin bought along with UPSAT and then killed once they copied the WAAS technology into their 430/530 line) does that and it allows you to program a hold at any point in space on any radial to that point. And it will direct an autopilot with GPSS (or a "manual pilot for that matter) to enter and fly that hold. IIRC BK claims the 770 will allow a flight plan to be created graphically, but I haven't seen that demonstrated yet.
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Yeah, Garmin dropping the 480 pi$$ed me off, I really liked that box, it was nice especially with the MX-20, beat the hell out of the 530/430 and had WAAS long before..... The 770 basically combines the 480 and MX-20 with an even simpler user interface (I always thought the 480 was much more intuitive than the x30 boxes). They demonstrated the graphic flight plan to me at OSH, pan, pan pan, press, pan pan pan, press....
 
wabower said:
Getting that clearance should be all the evidence you need that you aren't living right. Just tell them you don't have time for all that **** and to give you a vector somewhere you can fly to, and to save the tape.
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LOL, I can see it now "04Y we have an ammended clearance for you advise when ready to copy" "No, F- that you duche bags, just give me vectors to final...":yikes::rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
Geez....And how many years did I operate a TurboJet aircraft in and out of the LA Basin with 2 VOR's and 2 DME's and charts, with no RNAV whatsoever. I didn't find it so overwhelming.
 
Rotor&Wing said:
Geez....And how many years did I operate a TurboJet aircraft in and out of the LA Basin with 2 VOR's and 2 DME's and charts, with no RNAV whatsoever. I didn't find it so overwhelming.
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Right, no worries, can be done without a problem, I learned in the SoCal basin and did my IR ride with a single Kx170b, however, when you have $30,000 worth of whizbang from a company that already supports the same feature on another box they have, it's really annoying that $30k worth of whizbang requires me to do the exact same thing as I could do with a $1000 worth of gear. It's about value and the company purposely not putting in a feature so they can upsell you later. That's the annoying part, not having a chart in my lap and tuning radios, that's no problem.
 
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