King Autopilots and the future

[triple8s]

I have a KFC150 and my AI is making a new litle sound as its gyro winds down which has me thinking i may be in the market for an OH for the AI. So in preparing for that i hear that King is going to require all repairs on their products to be made at the factory and thats just a temporary thing and the support on their products may go away entirely. In light of this, what options do we have? Say I get the AI overhauled and then a servo or some other issue presents itself? Would a person be better off to get an STEC installed and then get an Aspen or other attitude indicator and ditch the King stuff now? Or.wait n see?

[peevee]

Personally my plan is to drive the AP via the Aspen and get a digital standby but hopefully not for a long time.

 

Someone mentioned a rumor that Garmin was going to announce the g5 certified with autopilots at Oshkosh. Maybe something like that will come along that can drive your 150.

[dlthig]

Expanding this thread a little, who provides the best support? King, Century or STEC?

[tony]

12 minutes ago, dlthig said:

Expanding this thread a little, who provides the best support? King, Century or STEC?

Brittian

[Jeev]

Keep an eye on the TruTrak autopilots.  My century III is acting up and I am holding off on the fix since there may be a full featured digital autopilot for under 5k in the near future..  Lots of unknowns here but I am really tired of chucking $1000's into my crapy old school autopilot every so often....  A digital AI like the G5 tied to an autopilot would be a sweet option!!  Unless you can't live without your AP (I can) I would wait and see... Now since its your AI acting up its a little harder to wait

Edited May 15, 2017 by Jeev

[carusoam]

AI OH by Mr. Bramble...

Unless that has become unabled by the BK snafu...

Best regards,

-a-

[N201MKTurbo]

I was just offered a KCS55 with a fresh overhaul by mid continent for a rediculious price. It includes all the components. It looks brand new.

With this news and the stuff coming on the market I wonder if it is worth the effort.

Edited May 15, 2017 by N201MKTurbo

[StevenL757]

17 hours ago, triple8s said:

I have a KFC150 and my AI is making a new litle sound as its gyro winds down which has me thinking i may be in the market for an OH for the AI. So in preparing for that i hear that King is going to require all repairs on their products to be made at the factory and thats just a temporary thing and the support on their products may go away entirely. In light of this, what options do we have? Say I get the AI overhauled and then a servo or some other issue presents itself? Would a person be better off to get an STEC installed and then get an Aspen or other attitude indicator and ditch the King stuff now? Or.wait n see?

Are you sure it's the ADI making the noise?  If not sure, would start by powering everything up and then pull the CB for your turn coordinator and see if the noise goes away or not.  I had a similar noise to what you're describing when I still had the steam gauge panel.  My noise was the TC spinning up and down when master was powered on, not the ADI.

Granted, the TC also shouldn't be making much of a noise either, but if that's the culprit, is a heck of a lot cheaper to replace or repair than an ADI.  Just a thought...let us know what you find.

Steve

[Guest]

Buy a cheap mechanic's stethoscope, get everything in the panel up and running.  Start probing the instrument faces until you find the noisy one.

Clarence

[N400YS]

Hi

Does exist stc for other AP than BK for the M20 MSE?

Thanks


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, N400YS said:

Hi

Does exist stc for other AP than BK for the M20 MSE?

Thanks


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

Yes, STEC and Century both have STC's for the M20J.

[N400YS]

Yes, STEC and Century both have STC's for the M20J.

Thanks!


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[Mark89114]

I am going over to Autopilot Central in Tulsa tomorrow....will see if I can get any more feedback on what they believe or think this D*** move means to us BK AP owners.  I will be more politically correct in person.

[StevenL757]

To Mark above, and the OP, I'll re-attach last week's post on this to hopefully eliminate some heartache and confusion regarding the BK autopilot decision and what that means to us having BK autopilots.

https://mooneyspace.com/topic/22351-bendixking-are-you-kidding/?page=3#comment-350708

Please note the PDF attached there.

Steve

[Mark89114]

Steve - I will be the first to admit I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer......but I see KI0256 (attitude indicator) and the HSI on there as well but I don't see the KFC225.....so I don't see how what was officially posted by BK eliminates any "heartache and confusion" if anything it adds to it.  BK will allow outside service people to work on only certain parts of your system but not others and I don't know how many other parts like servos, etc are really making my AP go...Makes no sense and as was discussed I doubt if we we will be getting better pricing or better service, I expect the opposite which should be everybody's concern.

I am going to derail the service and customer support topic a bit and wonder why they did this?  Some Ivy League MBA who doesn't know crap about anything is my guess and the lack of decision logic isn't unique to BK, just look at corporate America.   As has been discussed I don't think BK (separate from honeywell) as anything worth a crap, no new products, etc.  They are stuck just selling support and trying to maintain some cash flow till they shut the whole thing down is my guess, see previous comments about MBA's.  They probably have a huge bureaucracy who doesn't know what they are selling, doesn't know their costs and doesn't know the industry which is the reason they make D*** moves like this.  Sinking ship.  Best bet would be for some organization to pick up the BK assets, slim down and run a tight ship and make money.  Maybe sell licensing rights to repair shops so these guys can continue to support the product and eliminate all of the overhead.  Enough of my misinformed possibly wrong soap box.       

[StevenL757]

Am honestly not sure why BK would allow authorized repair stations to continue repairing AP components and servos.  My uneducated guess would be that instruments like the KI256 and KI525 are much more fragile and require a higher degree of skill to service versus circuit cards in an AP computer, but again, that's a guess.

Broadly, I was responding to your comment about what the move means to AP owners, as many who read the original thread I copied above had not seen the BK memo dated 1-May.  As I called out, what is notably absent in that list are all BK AP computers and related servos, while the KI525, KI256, and other instruments are on the list, as you mentioned.  Agree the BK situation isn't entirely positive right now, but as many of the posts in that thread were AP-centric, I felt compelled to share what I discovered.  My goal in posting the memo was to present factual data from a couple different sources, and that the AP repair/replace/OH situation isn't as bad as was initially-understood.

[Mark89114]

Well we shall see.....

The technician I spoke with wasn't super up to speed so nothing really to report.  Will see after I get my airplane fixed and maybe talk to somebody else.