Avionics…is anyone watching

daviddillehay

Surely someone at the Piper Society, knowledgeable about serious issues, pays attention. Or am I wasting my time posting and following up. Serious things like replacement for the Jillions of KX155s, ways to fix the ones we have. If not I may be better off at the Beachtalk Forum

empannin

I assume you are referring to your post about the KX-200. People have been waiting since at least July of 2023 and Bob Hart has some excellent posts on this. I count 9 posts or so on the KX-200 and even more on the KX-155.

It was announced in Aug of 2023 at OSH and supposed to ship in Dec. Obviously that did not happen. I think the avionics shops are as much in the dark as the pilots. I say there is zero chance it will be released prior to Osh at this point and my guess is the next official update will be at Osh end of July.

We can take bets on what the announcement will be but I think the likely announcement will be shipments will begin in the fall of 2024. My rationale for this is if they had some to ship now they would be getting them out the door to generate some buzz ahead of Osh. The purpose of their announcement will be to string you along further so that you don't jump to the competition...

Perhaps Beechtalk has better rumors but no one seems to have a KX-200 unit... One other idea is when it is eventually released there probably will be a flood of used KX-155's out there (in various states of decay). The KX-155 and GNS430 were super popular for the experimental world too but much better options out there now.

You could fix yours up or buy a serviceable one for ~ $2k today. I had my KX-165 screen fixed at a local shop for $900 a couple years ago.

I think the fundamental challenge is Honeywell doesn't really care about GA: 2023 Aerospace revenue was $13 Billion. Overall Honeywell has about $35B in sales, $30B in backlog and $5B in cashflow.

If they sold one to every GA plane in the US (200k) that is about $1 Billion in sales. Actual sales would likely be closer to ~ $30M annual. I would guess internally this is someone's passion project and their management is less excited because of the market size and margins. Bottom line is they don't have to ever release it and it will have no impact on their primary markets or their already poor reputation in GA. I do hope they bring it out regardless.

jacobsja

Good luck with Beechtalk. I tried to join their club just to expand my awareness, but the request was ignored.

daviddillehay

BTW, I was just being a joke when I mentioned Beechtalk. But I have waited weeks for any answer here. Given the info I have now seen I will forget about the KX200.

Dave Dillehay

empannin

Dave,

I think if you have needed it for awhile and can't get an answer from them - then you have your answer. Fixing the existing or swapping for a serviceable one is what I would do. Maybe x months (years?) down the road they will actually release the KX200. They designed it for plug compatibility but they gave up digital capability as a result so it will always be somewhat of an odd unit with a nice interface driving analog outputs and not as integrated as other options for comm.

Eric