Life of Avionics

UAL747400 said:
Juts flew a 99 with "cranky coms" the other day. You know the kind that make you feel like you're manipulating something deep within the loins of the earth? So, FOREVER is my guess! :)
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Classic B-model fuel gauge reliability.
 
I think avionics are magical, they live forever, which is great for poor people like me when they need to put radios in their airplanes because there's a steady supply of 30 year old equipment that works just fine.
 
UAL747400 said:
Juts flew a 99 with "cranky coms" the other day. You know the kind that make you feel like you're manipulating something deep within the loins of the earth? So, FOREVER is my guess! :)
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I love how as the 170s get older, the tuning gets more approximate...we had one that on ATIS (135.2) would pick up the guy in the next parking spot transmitting out times to ops on 131.5. That same one would occasionally kick the GPS offline when transmitting on certain frequencies.
 
Roger Roger said:
I love how as the 170s get older, the tuning gets more approximate...
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There's a dude who specializes in 170's, he'll tune test and tune them, even does cosmetic cleanup. I imagine he'll be in business for as long as he's alive and feels like doing it... those things are tanks.
 
rframe said:
I think avionics are magical, they live forever, which is great for poor people like me when they need to put radios in their airplanes because there's a steady supply of 30 year old equipment that works just fine.
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For that older equipment, what is cost to repair / maintain?
 
ComplexHiAv8r said:
For that older equipment, what is cost to repair / maintain?
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I put an overhauled KNS80 Nav/GS/DME receiver with warranty in my plane for about $800.
I could get it overhauled again for a little less than that price.
I could have put a new Garmin SL-30 in for $3,800 but wouldn't even have DME... that's a whole lot of overhauled KNS80's


The guy who overhauls KX-170's charges $250-600 to calibrate/retune them to factory new condition, depending on what's wrong. So if you have one in an existing airplane that's just acting up a little, you could just get it overhauled to factory new for maybe $500 and it'll probably go another 30 years or you could swap it out with a new digital KY-96 for for $3,000. Now maybe you want a nice flip-flop digital com for Number 1 if you travel much, but for guard/atis or as a single vfr com... yeah I think I'd stick with the 170 myself :)
 
Those KX-170's are awesome. The Beech Travel Air I flew almost 10 hours in over the weekend had 1 KX-170, and a bendix VOR/DME RNAV receiver in it. No GPS whatsoever. That's what I call flying. :)
 
Apophis said:
Those KX-170's are awesome. The Beech Travel Air I flew almost 10 hours in over the weekend had 1 KX-170, and a bendix VOR/DME RNAV receiver in it. No GPS whatsoever. That's what I call flying. :)
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Nah, in the real fun flying you don't even have radios.
 
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