Poor King

Grum.Man

Grum.Man

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Grum.Man
While at OSH I stopped by the King display. I want them to succeed so badly as they were the staple of avionics back in the day and I really dislike Garmin, but man was it pathetic looking at their equipment and talking to their staff. They didn't have any tech guys at the show, just salesman. Their GPS is so antiquated it's not even funny. The new experimental MFD is a nice try but the graphics were poor and it's response was very laggy. I did like the fact that it was fully integrated as far as ADHRS and airdata.

I still have hope however, the sales guys sounded like they had a lot of things in the pipeline that may make them relevant again.
 
Honeywell made a strategic decision to reinvest in GA aircraft again through their Bendix/King division. What we are seeing is the initial reentry of a company hopefully getting back on it's feet after years of corporate starvation by its parent company.
 
Grum.Man said:
While at OSH I stopped by the King display. I want them to succeed so badly as they were the staple of avionics back in the day and I really dislike Garmin, but man was it pathetic looking at their equipment and talking to their staff. They didn't have any tech guys at the show, just salesman. Their GPS is so antiquated it's not even funny. The new experimental MFD is a nice try but the graphics were poor and it's response was very laggy. I did like the fact that it was fully integrated as far as ADHRS and airdata.

I still have hope however, the sales guys sounded like they had a lot of things in the pipeline that may make them relevant again.
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King got complacent as a company. When some of their engineers wanted to make a GPS in the early days of that technology, they chose to not allow the project to start, choosing to coast on their existing offerings. Those engineers left King and formed Garmin.

So, your dislike of Garmin is a bit odd. Garmin is what King would be today if King had listened to their engineers instead of their accountants, and Garmin was started by King's best, which is why King has been in decline ever since.

BTW, King always talks about what they have in the pipeline, but they really suck at actually delivering a product. The KI-300 that was introduced three years ago now still isn't shipping, for example. I'm also not optimistic about them ever coming back from the nearly-dead. They recently decided to bring all of their service and repairs in-house, asking avionics shops to return spare parts and manuals to them. That's what Narco did before they finally went out of business. Also, our experiences working with them for support of existing products (namely, our KFC150) has led us to make the decision that we are no longer going to repair any of our existing King equipment - If it breaks, it's gone. We're already down to a KX165 plus the KFC150 and all of its associated instrumentation (KI-256, KCS-55A, etc) and that may be going away in the next couple of years.

NordicDave said:
Honeywell made a strategic decision to reinvest in GA aircraft again through their Bendix/King division. What we are seeing is the initial reentry of a company hopefully getting back on it's feet after years of corporate starvation by its parent company.
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I'm not really seeing any signs of anything new, though. They've sunk a lot of R&D dollars into products that aren't even as good as what's already available and will likely never be sold. Garmin, Dynon, and Avidyne are all light-years ahead of King at this point.
 
I suppose I would dislike King had they turned into Garmin. Garmin makes great products and I don’t blame them for their strategy but it irks me they don’t let their equipment interface with other companies as freely as others at least in the experimental world.
 
Sounds like the King booth was as dead as it was my first OSH in 2012.

They’re not coming back from the dead. They do not know how. They may continue to be walking dead for a long time still, but they haven’t done anything interesting or even right, since the days just after they stopped selling LORAN-C.
 
Grum.Man said:
I suppose I would dislike King had they turned into Garmin. Garmin makes great products and I don’t blame them for their strategy but it irks me they don’t let their equipment interface with other companies as freely as others at least in the experimental world.
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They definitely buy into the "walled garden" philosophy, though they have lightened up on that in the last couple of years. It's actually Garmin's protocol that's allowing all of the portable devices to talk to the various apps now rather than being either proprietary or requiring extensive development work to support all the different devices.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
So, your dislike of Garmin is a bit odd. Garmin is what King would be today if King had listened to their engineers instead of their accountants, and Garmin was started by King's best, which is why King has been in decline ever since.
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Just because you disagree with someone's taste/likes/dislikes doesn't have to make it odd.
Regardless on how Garmin was formed, their UI just does not sit well with a lot of people who prefer the more intuitive UI or BK's products. There. Who's odd now? :) (heh, just wanted to point out that it's all in the perspective)
But seriously, I myself find BK's UI more intuitive and easier to use than the clunky Garmin UI. I went into it unbiased and by using both BK and Garmin GPS units for several years, I gained some experience and formed an opinion. And I never had to carry a full-blown manual in a cockpit with a BK, it was easy to learn and use. But I have to carry a manual in a cockpit with a Garmin unit because no matter how many times I try to re-learn, I can never remember how many secret left twists or right twists something takes on that fakakta box. Commencing an RNAV approach and having to pull out a book to figure out how to do something that should be normally easy to do is a no-go in my book. But call me odd. :)
 
denverpilot said:
Sounds like the King booth was as dead as it was my first OSH in 2012.

They’re not coming back from the dead. They do not know how. They may continue to be walking dead for a long time still, but they haven’t done anything interesting or even right, since the days just after they stopped selling LORAN-C.
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Honeywell can fix anythingggg!!
 
BigBadLou said:
Just because you disagree with someone's taste/likes/dislikes doesn't have to make it odd.
Regardless on how Garmin was formed, their UI just does not sit well with a lot of people who prefer the more intuitive UI or BK's products. There. Who's odd now? :) (heh, just wanted to point out that it's all in the perspective)
But seriously, I myself find BK's UI more intuitive and easier to use than the clunky Garmin UI. I went into it unbiased and by using both BK and Garmin GPS units for several years, I gained some experience and formed an opinion. And I never had to carry a full-blown manual in a cockpit with a BK, it was easy to learn and use. But I have to carry a manual in a cockpit with a Garmin unit because no matter how many times I try to re-learn, I can never remember how many secret left twists or right twists something takes on that fakakta box. Commencing an RNAV approach and having to pull out a book to figure out how to do something that should be normally easy to do is a no-go in my book. But call me odd. :)
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OK, I have said quite a few times that I'm not a big fan of Garmin's UI on the GTNs, as it requires too many touches to get to what you're looking for IMO. I'm really glad we got the GMA 350c audio panel, as navigating by voice control is quite a bit faster.

But... Are you talking about the KSN 770 when you say you "find BK's UI more intuitive", or the old KLN 89B or 94? Because if you like the KSN 770 UI, you are in fact odd. That is one of the clunkiest UI's I've ever seen. I can't even get it to go direct to a fix without asking for help. It's a complete turd, and not even a polished turd, just a plain old stinky turd.

I never really used a manual on our former 89B (and it's actually not at all unlike the Garmin GNS), and I've heard the 94 was quite a bit better in the UI department. But the 770... :vomit:
 
In 1988 I began working as an applications engineer for a software company with a new niche. There were twelve of us and we grow our product and brand to over 200 employees. I served in many capacities and had a front row seat to watch this growing industry.

From all that, I can tell you that the best technology does not always win the race. Perception is reality. By and large Garmin is perceived to be the best technology. Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, but they have the market, they know it and they price accordingly. If they price too high it may open the door for some other camel to get his nose under the tent. Maybe Avidyne is that Camel.

When selecting technology you want support, features and a company that appears that they will be around for a while. If you get wonderful technology without support and long term company health there will be disappointment down the road.

My $0.02,
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Because if you like the KSN 770 UI, you are in fact odd. That is one of the clunkiest UI's I've ever seen. I can't even get it to go direct to a fix without asking for help. It's a complete turd, and not even a polished turd, just a plain old stinky turd.
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KSN 770? Frankly, never seen it. So I cannot comment on it. I'll take a look sometime. You're scaring me. :)

MBDiagMan said:
I can tell you that the best technology does not always win the race. Perception is reality.
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The problem with majority of humans is that they mistakenly combine quality and popularity. Smart people can differentiate those two. The rest can't. Hence the ever-popular Kard-ass-ians etc. :)
Same with quantity over quality. Again, can't supplement one with the other. Or substitute. :)
 
BigBadLou said:
KSN 770? Frankly, never seen it. So I cannot comment on it. I'll take a look sometime. You're scaring me. :)
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If that’s the thing with the joystick, I’m with @flyingcheesehead. Worst GPS UI I’ve ever seen in a panel mount.

BigBadLou said:
The problem with majority of humans is that they mistakenly combine quality and popularity. Smart people can differentiate those two. The rest can't. Hence the ever-popular Kard-ass-ians etc. :)
Same with quantity over quality. Again, can't supplement one with the other. Or substitute. :)
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Sometimes there’s initial quality or innovation and then the popularity contest starts and the quality mostly disappears and nobody notices. Re: IBM, DEC, Microsoft, Apple... even Linux under certain flavors (cough, Ubuntu, cough...).
 
denverpilot said:
Sometimes there’s initial quality or innovation and then the popularity contest starts and the quality mostly disappears and nobody notices. Re: IBM, DEC, Microsoft, Apple... even Linux under certain flavors (cough, Ubuntu, cough...).
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I also feel like employees come and go, and the new ones tend to like to introduce new crap just for the sake of making the change and putting their 'mark' on it. We get this phenomenon in the training department at work too.
 
kayoh190 said:
I also feel like employees come and go, and the new ones tend to like to introduce new crap just for the sake of making the change and putting their 'mark' on it. We get this phenomenon in the training department at work too.
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There’s a phrase for that. Seagull managers. They fly in, crap on everything, and leave.
 
BigBadLou said:
KSN 770? Frankly, never seen it. So I cannot comment on it. I'll take a look sometime. You're scaring me. :)
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Well, that's where our disconnect was then. I used to have a King KLN 89B in the panel, replaced late last year with a GTN 750. There wasn't really anything "wrong" with the King UI, I found it to be pretty similar to Garmin's GNS series - Groups and pages. The groups and pages were different, but overall they were pretty similar.

King's new-generation GPS, the KSN 770, is a POS.

denverpilot said:
If that’s the thing with the joystick, I’m with @flyingcheesehead. Worst GPS UI I’ve ever seen in a panel mount.
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That's the one...

ksn770.jpg

And yes, despite the -D> key, you have to get out a manual to go direct to a fix. Completely non-intuitive, to the point where every year when I go to their booth, I still can't figure it out, and half of the time, the first rep I talk to can't either and they have to call over a second rep. To figure out DIRECT TO!!! Facepalm.

The idea behind it was excellent: Make a nice color GPS/Nav/Com where you can access any function by either touchscreen or knobs and buttons. Unfortunately, it seems like that's where the good ideas ended.
 
I had the same experience with King reps and the KSN-770 at Sun n’ Fun this year. I was asking the sales rep how to go direct-to a couple of waypoints down the line in the flight plan, and he had to ask another rep who didn’t exactly know either. The third person kind of showed me what I was looking for.
 
I’ll have nothing to do with king when they won’t even make the pins for their old stuff. The pins are now $3 each and getting more expensive.
 
Aviator305 said:
I had the same experience with King reps and the KSN-770 at Sun n’ Fun this year. I was asking the sales rep how to go direct-to a couple of waypoints down the line in the flight plan, and he had to ask another rep who didn’t exactly know either. The third person kind of showed me what I was looking for.
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Any outfit, in pretty well any industry, that has front line marketing/sales/demonstration personnel that lack product knowledge of what they are selling is (still) in trouble.
 
Grum.Man said:
I suppose I would dislike King had they turned into Garmin. Garmin makes great products and I don’t blame them for their strategy but it irks me they don’t let their equipment interface with other companies as freely as others at least in the experimental world.
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Yeah, sort of like Apple.

Seems that wanting King to succeed versus Garmin or whatever is more a brand loyalty thing. It’s often an emotional thing, hard to build, durable when nurtured, easy to lose when taken for granted.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
Bill Watson said:
Seems that wanting King to succeed versus Garmin or whatever is more a brand loyalty thing.
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It's inevitable that, when a conversation like this starts here, it doesn't take long for the fan boys to hijack it and make it a battleground for their preferred brand.

Competition is good.
 
I’d be plenty happy if Avidyne and Dynon start to kick Garmin from behind, and if King would too, it’d be great.

My experience thus far is King is exactly where they were when I played with that GPS at their booth at OSH in 2012. Nothing has changed other than they’ve angered all of their distributors and repair shops with requiring everything be shipped to them for flat rate repairs.

Garmin can kinda get away with that. They have a track record of doing enough good stuff that a return and replace model is begrudgingly okay.

But the company that’s more than five years behind Gamin now, and still can’t staff their pavilion building at OSH with anyone who knows how their GPS works?

They aren’t going to make it. They’re on life support. Too many years of not doing anything significant and not caring.
 
My RV-6 has older King stuff. Bulletproof so far. But I bought that stuff right at the peak of King's popularity. Pretty soon, Garmin was about the only game in town. I avoided joining the "Borg" for a long time, using off-brand handhelds, which was in some way a protest against the Garmin. King re-entered the picture in ~2008 with their portable AV80R GPS. Yikes, what a POS. Whatever brand loyalty I had with them took a severe beating.

Now I have a Garmin 696 panel mounted in the RV. Great product. I can't believe I toyed with so much off-brand crap for so many years.

But I do wish King was competitive at the product level. That would spur on Garmin to develop better products and might result in some price competition.
 
Paulie said:
I’ll have nothing to do with king when they won’t even make the pins for their old stuff. The pins are now $3 each and getting more expensive.
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We needed an overhauled trim servo for the KFC150. They quoted us $9,600 for the servo, and said they didn't have any. Translation: "Go away."

Luckily, our avionics shop has a fantastic component-level guy who got ours working again for a tiny fraction of King's quoted price. If the autopilot experiences any more issues, we will follow Honeywell/Bendix/King's desires and buy products from someone who actually wants our business.
 
Even if King cares about the light GA market, they sure aren’t showing it. I stopped in to see what 2020 compliance would cost. In order to keep my KFC-200, there was still another $28k in products the guy said I would need for one reason or another. All that and I still had to keep the Skywatch box in the back. At least the L-3 guy was nice enough to show me a transponder option that lost the box but used the antennas to keep the active traffic system for a fraction of the cost.

I keep hoping I’ll get to Osh one year and King will be run by people intelligent enough about GA that I think they’ll survive. Hasn’t happened so far.
 
Paulie said:
I’ll have nothing to do with king when they won’t even make the pins for their old stuff. The pins are now $3 each and getting more expensive.
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We've been roundly criticized for 45 years for using "washing machine" Molex nylon connectors. Same connector, same company, and the pins are still a nickel each. And not a single failure in all those years. A rough back of the napkin calculation says we've got some ten thousand of those connectors flying around somewhere. There is something to be said for using good quality commercial parts.

Jim
 
Paulie said:
I’ll have nothing to do with king when they won’t even make the pins for their old stuff. The pins are now $3 each and getting more expensive.
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Have you priced the Narco pins lately? :hairraise:
 
King has announced a subscription plan ,a payment plan making it more affordable to upgrade your stack. Program was announced in General aviation news.
 
frfly172 said:
King has announced a subscription plan ,a payment plan making it more affordable to upgrade your stack. Program was announced in General aviation news.
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Yeah ... and their website now says, "BendixKing has recently modified its repair and overhaul policies. As of January 1, 2018 only BendixKing and authorized repair centers may repair and overhaul BendixKing equipment. The following companies have chosen to meet the requirements to become an authorized repair center."

There are five -- count them -- five "Repair Partners" in the Western Hemisphere, of which one is in Argentina.

:confused:o_O:rolleyes:

These guys are starting to make Apple look ethical and transparent.
 
Pilawt said:
"BendixKing has recently modified its repair and overhaul policies. As of January 1, 2018 only BendixKing and authorized repair centers may repair and overhaul BendixKing equipment. The following companies have chosen to meet the requirements to become an authorized repair center."
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Do you think when it is worded that way it sound like it is a good thing! ?
 
I also stopped at the Bendix King booth at OshKosh to play with their "competitor" to the GTN 750.

Ain't gonna make it. My 20 year old son could not even figure it out. Way too complex and non- intuitive to compete in today's market.

I too wanted a reason to believe in the company of my youth and young aviation years.

Not gonna happen.
 
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