TruTrak Autopilot Pre Order's / Status Update

[DanM20C]

2 hours ago, Will.iam said:

Dan you mentioned a remote 9000 does that mean you don't get the front face plate and all the info is feed into the IFD540? saving panel real estate? Why the G5 for hsi? is the autopilot getting it's attitude from the G5?

Yes the 540 will display and control the remote lynx.  I like clean, simple panel’s and like the idea of going remote.  

I’m choosing a G5  for my hsi because it’s an inexpensive way to get GPSS and get ahrs for back up. Attitude info for the C41 will still come from my vacuum ai.   If I decide to go Dynon down the road I have another plane I could stick the g5 in. If I go gfc500 route I would continue to use the g5.  
 

Cheers,

 Dan

[Sandman993]

On 7/19/2020 at 1:48 PM, NJMac said:

And at the same time, Garmin keeps running full steam ahead..... To the victors go the spoils I guess.

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Yessir... garmin’s latest conquest is adding several new auto land platforms... raining new stc’s at garmin. These Bk folks still using FAA going too slow and tied up in paperwork excuses?

[carusoam]

@Shiny moose we’re you looking for @Jeev’s thread?

He had the best insight available for all things Tru-trak...

See if he has an update... regarding BK’s current status...

Best regards,

-a-

[Jeev]

On 10/7/2020 at 3:45 PM, carusoam said:

@Shiny moose we’re you looking for @Jeev’s thread?

He had the best insight available for all things Tru-trak...

See if he has an update... regarding BK’s current status...

Best regards,

-a-

Still no word form BK .  I am waiting up to 9 weeks to get the approved kits for Cessna's & Pipers.  

[carusoam]

Thanks for the update Sanjeev!

Wishing BK could improve their situation...

Best regards,

-a-

[MBDiagMan]

With such a serious backlog for Cessnas and Pipers, what would be the motivation to provide them for Mooney’s?  If they hadn’t committed to Mooney availability “next month” over two years ago, my attitude would be much different.

[NJMac]

Still no word form BK .  I am waiting up to 9 weeks to get the approved kits for Cessna's & Pipers.  

I thought BK made the purchase to make TT things better and expedite the production? At this point, it's looking like they made the acquisition just to pronounce a death sentence overtop a superior product- or at least one that was positioned to hurt their market share?

 

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[Hank]

22 hours ago, NJMac said:

I thought BK made the purchase to make TT things better and expedite the production? At this point, it's looking like they made the acquisition just to pronounce a death sentence overtop a superior product- or at least one that was positioned to hurt their market share?

That happens a lot . . . . If Company A feels threatened by Startup B, they buy them out and the superior new product goes away, driving sales of the original Company A product. Except now, where the Company A product is outdated, cost is too high relative to its use [can't put in an autopilot that costs as much as the rest of the airplane!]. So we get left with nothing . . .

[EricJ]

5 minutes ago, Hank said:

That happens a lot . . . . If Company A feels threatened by Startup B, they buy them out and the superior new product goes away, driving sales of the original Company A product. Except now, where the Company A product is outdated, cost is too high relative to its use [can't put in an autopilot that costs as much as the rest of the airplane!]. So we get left with nothing . . .

Another thing that happens a lot is that the smaller company is bought with the best of intentions by the strategic managers, and then the managers tasked with integrating it into the company or executing the plan drop the ball.   Or, as often happens, some manager on another internal project thinks it is competing with him, or somebody thinks they can advance their career by making the case for cutting costs by killing peripheral projects/businesses.

Basically, there are far more paths to failure for an acquisition than success.   Seen this from the inside many times.

 

[Hank]

11 minutes ago, EricJ said:

Another thing that happens a lot is that the smaller company is bought with the best of intentions by the strategic managers, and then the managers tasked with integrating it into the company or executing the plan drop the ball.   Or, as often happens, some manager on another internal project thinks it is competing with him, or somebody thinks they can advance their career by making the case for cutting costs by killing peripheral projects/businesses.

Basically, there are far more paths to failure for an acquisition than success.   Seen this from the inside many times.

 

I've only been sold once. Not just the plant that I worked in, but the whole blooming company. About four years later, after replacing lots of upper management and reorganizing a lot, the new owners tried to sell the company for 25% less than they paid. After 18+ months of not selling, they spun it off instead. Last I heard, the spin-off was doing well.

[gsxrpilot]

I was involved in a start-up company that we sold in July this year. It was my experience that the investors and VC's on both sides were more interested in the "deal" and not whether it was a good fit, or even a viable product.

[steingar]

TruTrak is now part of Bendix King.  That does't bode well for anyone.

[EricJ]

9 minutes ago, gsxrpilot said:

I was involved in a start-up company that we sold in July this year. It was my experience that the investors and VC's on both sides were more interested in the "deal" and not whether it was a good fit, or even a viable product.

This is the fuel and rationale behind many startups, unfortunately, to create something that can be passed off to a VC at a profit.  Making a useful product or sustainable business seems to be not even part of the thinking in many cases, because it is often not that difficult to find a VC that doesn't look too deep into the details.    I did technical due diligence for careful VCs in the wireless comm space for many years, and the number of bad ideas, bad science, or just con jobs out there was staggering.   And then there are the guys with genuinely good technology and ideas that aren't good business people and get passed up because they're "not investible".    It's amazing as much useful stuff makes it to market as actually does. 

 

[tmo]

8 minutes ago, steingar said:

TruTrak is now par to Bendix King.  That does't bode well for anyone.

Except for Trio, Dynon and Garmin, possibly. They became dead to me the moment King bought them, not that I ever seriously considered the TruTrak or Trio.

[EricJ]

2 minutes ago, tmo said:

Except for Trio, Dynon and Garmin, possibly. They became dead to me the moment King bought them, not that I ever seriously considered the TruTrak or Trio.

It does look like Dynon is going to be the go-to solution for folks looking for an alternative to Garmin.   The more I think about it the more I'm leaning toward just putting in their glass system once their autopilot comes out.

[tmo]

Dynon and Avidyne... I really hope they don't mess this up for by some petty argument over compatibility / whose STC is bigger...

[whiskytango]

@Jeev mentioned that he is waiting up to 9 weeks to get approved Aerocruze 100 kits for Cessnas and Pipers.  That suggests to me that either (a) BK has such a huge demand for the AeroCruze 100 that they cannot keep up with demand, even with expanded production, (b) BK has not been able to successfully ramp up production since buying TT, or (c) The COVID-19 situation has adversely affected production.  Who knows?

BK claims that the FAA has all the necessary paperwork for the Mooney STC, and it's the FAA's fault that the STC has not been issued (funny how Big G never has these problems.  Did BK annoy some folks at FAA at some point in the past, and now they go to the end of the line?).   

Very frustrating.

[Hank]

On 9/1/2020 at 8:10 AM, LANCECASPER said:

Garmin has an in-house FAA approval process. 

How'd that work out for Boeing in the long run?

[Hank]

dp . . . . .  

 

Edited October 19, 2020 by Hank

[MBDiagMan]

5 hours ago, steingar said:

TruTrak is now par to Bendix King.  That does't bode well for anyone.

Yes, when I bought my F two years ago I expected that I would have an economical autopilot soon.  I now believe that if you want a Mooney wi an autopilot, you better buy a plane with it already installed.

[LANCECASPER]

6 minutes ago, Hank said:

How'd that work out for Boeing in the long run?

I agree, hopefully the FAA has woken up and will not let companies do their own approvals. I got beaten up badly in another post when I mentioned that if Garmin didn't have in-house approvals, I didn't think the FAA would have ever approved the Garmin GFC500, since you lose the ability to fly a coupled ILS  or VOR approach if you lose GPS. Losing all coupled approaches with a GPS outage is a design limitation that no other approved autopilot I know of has. 

[NJMac]

1 hour ago, LANCECASPER said:

 Losing all coupled approaches with a GPS outage is a design limitation that no other approved autopilot I know of has. 

And yet they're selling like hot cakes. 

[aviatoreb]

2 hours ago, LANCECASPER said:

I agree, hopefully the FAA has woken up and will not let companies do their own approvals. I got beaten up badly in another post when I mentioned that if Garmin didn't have in-house approvals, I didn't think the FAA would have ever approved the Garmin GFC500, since you lose the ability to fly a coupled ILS  or VOR approach if you lose GPS. Losing all coupled approaches with a GPS outage is a design limitation that no other approved autopilot I know of has. 

That's true - 

But honestly I bet the GPS system infrastructure is more reliable than my KFC200.  So if thats the issue and all things being equal I would not turn my nose up to a GFC500 on the issue of the possibility of loosing the GPS infrastructure (from maybe a nuclear EMF pulse?) vs relying on my KFC200 to function from day to day for a coupled approach?  (Disclaimer - so far my KFC200 has been very reliable, knock on wood - just saying).  

And then there is hand flying.  Just did an IPC (since I fell outside my 6 month window due to pandemic), and the darned guy made me handfly!  Which I did.

[LANCECASPER]

1 hour ago, NJMac said:

And yet they're selling like hot cakes. 

And a lot of the people buying them don't even realize this limitation until they read the AFMS.

[Hank]

32 minutes ago, aviatoreb said:

That's true - 

But honestly I bet the GPS system infrastructure is more reliable than my KFC200.  So if thats the issue and all things being equal I would not turn my nose up to a GFC500 on the issue of the possibility of loosing the GPS infrastructure (from maybe a nuclear EMF pulse?) vs relying on my KFC200 to function from day to day for a coupled approach?

Spoken like a man who doesn't live where the Navy conducts trials that "may" block GPS reception for 250nm? And here in LA, we get it from the Atlantic Fleet, from the Gulf and from Air Force testing out of Pensacola . . . . It may be "the sunny South," but it doesn't always shine to the ground.