It’s a question some I know are asking.
Currently, IMHO, the IFD540 is a better box. The user interface is much nicer and more responsive. Even the touch screen works better.
But that’s all “just software”…
Subject to patent protection limitations, anything can be improved.
Why would the market be too small for 2 vendors?
Avidyne have an edge with the seamless GNS530/430 tray replacement. Also they can attack Garmin on features and price. The AML approach opens the whole market of aircraft at once so they can compete with Garmin in every single installation.
I like the Avidyne boxes better too, although they’re even more expensive than Garmin.
- Knobs AND touchscreen (and that’s HW, not SW!)
- max 3 clicks to any screen
- nicer route planning
- plug and play with 430W
I really hope that Avidyne survives …
Digging this up….
I’m planning to replace the GNS530 with an Avidyne IFD540 or Garmin GTN750 instead of just updating the GNS to WAAS.
The price tag for that replacement is approx. 6-8k plus/minus fitting in all three options, if I sell the GNS against the price.
In essence it all boils down to the following points
- the Avidyne is plug and play, and many additional items cost less or nothing compared to the GTN750, and
- the GTN750 has a bigger screen, is more expensive outright and re. add ons, including that it’s not plug and play and needs fitting the panel.
the big question is: will the Avidyne at one point be somewhat worthless, because a) it’ll be either obsolete as a device, b) or out of service either because Garmin buys Avidyne or Avidyne goes out of business. That’s my concern. Effectively every Tom Dick and Harry knows the Garmin products, they’re stable in value and I can sell it in 10 years or so at a good price. What about the Avidyne then ? Any ideas ?
I am looking at the same decision, to get LPV. My views posted above still hold.
Feedback from dealers for both indicates that Avidyne have suffered much more than Garmin from poor QA, sometimes approaching a 100% rate for defective boxes if the installer tests all the interfaces before installing the box (or the installation needs all the interfaces anyway). But recent feedback indicates that this situation is much improved. However there are still indications of a serious cash shortage, evident from some angles like how they (non magnanimously) deal with products which have failed just days outside the warranty. All this is solid info I have but obviously can’t say who from.
Also Avidyne doesn’t appear to have any European service presence; everything has to go back to the USA. They don’t even allow any European dealer to connect up a laptop and read out the error log, etc. Back to the USA for that too. And if a dealer has two boxes to return, they accept only one back and he can return the 2nd one only when the 1st one has been returned to him. These are signs of a strict cost control policy, I guess…
If Garmin bought Avidyne and shut down the IFD products – which would be the logical business decision since the GTN and IFD lines do similar things – there would be an uproar in the USA (Europe, as usual, doesn’t count). So in that case the more likely outcome would be the GNS480 type scenario where a product continues but is not significantly updated and eventually dies, but database support continues. That’s not a bad outcome – there are great many very happy GNS480 owners. Frankly, I would stick with my KLN94 for European IFR if there was an LPV upgrade 
If Avidyne went bust then I don’t see the boxes would die. Quite a few are now installed. Most likely somebody would buy the assets (discarding the liabilities, in the usual way) and run it as a cash cow. Whether they might eventually update the product depends on whether the IFD programmers are available / how well or badly the software was written. King suffered when most of the engineers left in the 1990s (some to Garmin) and they never got any management which would make it an “attractive on the CV” (a key consideration, even more in the USA than here) place to work. The hardware in these boxes is fairly trivial; it is the software which is the major thing. So it would depend on who buys Avidyne. There is a number of firms which have general and reasonably current avionics technology (I don’t mean JPI or Shadin with their 1980s stuff) but don’t have any certified GPS boxes in their range. They would be very interested. I was in a business 1978-1991 which went bust in 1993 and the guy who bought it recovered his purchase cost in 2 months!
So, my concern with Avidyne would not be a dead box which has to be replaced. It would be
The way I see it, the longer one waits the clearer the picture will be. The installation I am planning would be at least 30k and would need a really competent shop, so I am not in a hurry.
Sorry to sound negative but when “you” are spending say 30k, being a cheer leader personality is not the best approach
Peter wrote:
Also Avidyne doesn’t appear to have any European service presence; everything has to go back to the USA. They don’t even allow any European dealer to connect up a laptop and read out the error log, etc. Back to the USA for that too. And if a dealer has two boxes to return, they accept only one back and he can return the 2nd one only when the 1st one has been returned to him. These are signs of a strict cost control policy, I guess…
I don’t know where you’re getting this info, Peter, but from my experience it is outright wrong. It is correct that they don’t have a service location in Europe similar to Garmin’s in the UK. But I don’t really see the difference for anyone outside the UK. Shipping to the UK or US costs the same in time and $$$, and Garmin dealers can’t do anything with their boxes either …. just ship back to the UK. I own 3 Avidyne boxes, IFD540/IFD440 GPS/NAV/COM pair plus AXP340 ADS-B out xpdr, and Avidyne support has been outstanding. The AXP340 has worked flawlessly which I cannot say about my Garmin 330. I was an early-adopter with the IFDxxx and went through teething pains related to getting first release hardware and software, but I consider myself through them now, have put over 100hrs on the boxes and the latest ones are solid. Even end users can and do download error logs (done via usb dump, not direct pc connection) and send them off to Avidyne for analysis. I use a local Avidyne dealer in Zurich for the work and their work quality is high although they do charge Swiss prices which can be shocking. They have not indicated any issues dealing with Avidyne and Avidyne has covered all warranty work. On these devices, the first delivered units are only now coming to end of warranty, so stories about not accepting warranty claims one day after expiry must apply to other equipment.
It is obvious that Avidyne do not have the financial weight of Garmin, whose GA business is less than 15% of the total too. A strict cost-control policy is not a bad thing when you don’t have Garmin’s deep pockets. For decades some people bought only IBM computers simply because they were the “safe” financial choice. To each his own. I like to see the competition and believe it is good for us all in the long run. Some are prepared to accept and support the risk and others just want the safest option, which in this case will always be Garmin. I’m very happy with my choice and love my Avidyne’s.
Vince
I don’t know where you’re getting this info, Peter, but from my experience it is outright wrong
Well, apart from my comments on the error log, you have written more or less what I have written but with a different emphasis
I should have said my error log comments were based on some comical situations around the DFC90, which I got from the actual owner(s) who were involved. An autopilot is by far the most common box whose error log needs to be read out. If a European Avidyne dealer can read out that error log, that is indeed a change since the past.
Setting the pure $$$ consideration aside, there is a philosophical element in the decision.
Garmin only announces products when they are ready for (almost) immediate delivery. We’ll see what their “big announcement” will be later this week. They can afford to do that. Avidyne announces product (too) long in advance and then puts people off with the wait for availability. For example, the Avidyne IFDxxx series had a 3 year production incubation with wifi/BT hardware capability from the start but the software functionality has been coming in drips over the 2+ years since first unit delivery. In the meantime, Garmin has been using the time to (secretly) develop competitive capability and announcing just before Avidyne availability. I suspect there are some people who regret purchasing a 330ES a week before the new ADS-B transponder announcements, or a Flightstream box just before announcement of the new SD card with similar functionality but without the installation costs. How many are affected? Who knows? They are likely just grinding their teeth and not shit-storming Garmin about it like some have done with Avidyne on their failings. Avidyne was also very slow to get EASA approval, likely due to resource issues, and that has also negatively impacted the European installed base.
I recall the days when avionics shops were pointing customers to King over Garmin, simply because of the general (not GPS) installed base and comfort zone of King experience. I’m not sure avionics shops are the best place to get an opinion on equipment, although their experience can be one element of consideration if they have enough to really compare. One Avidyne installation compared to hundreds of Garmin’s is not really valid. A shop’s reputation for quality of staff and work is more important when making a choice of installer.
My experience of Avidyne’s dissembling, possibly outright lying, to their customers is such that I tell people, in my seminars and when I am training them individually, to steer clear of their products.
This is not because the products are bad (my TAS 605 is very good, though I have seen a number of IFDs with overheating problems, and some TAS 605s with reversed readings), but because they are clearly willing to say anything to get a sale. I have a promise of ADS-B In in “a few months” from mid 2014, with now absolutely no sign that they are going to fulfil their promise, ever. Had they not made the promise, I would definitely have bought a Garmin traffic system – I really wish I had.
I realise that some of the error is mine. I trusted them innocently. I should have done some more diligence and realised that they have a long history of making promises that they then go on to renege on. In my innocence and stupidity I accepted a certificate from them in blind faith.
I just wonder how they manage to keep such a loyal following.
I regret ever doing business with them and I am resigned to having lost many thousands of pounds to them.
For decades some people bought only IBM computers simply because they were the “safe” financial choice
I was in that business, making plug-compatible coax and twinax boxes, and we were always impressed at the quality of IBM engineering and documentation.
If you are baking cakes or whatever you want an IT solution which does the job, and IBM delivered on that. I visited so many IBM customers. I was one – with an AS/400. IBM were brilliant – the HP and Tektronix of the computer field – when America had a massive technology lead, was going to the moon, etc. I have a 1995 Tek scope on the bench here, which needs a repair. All the manuals and circuit descriptions are available…
IBM rightly ended up owning the world – until the world changed, as we all know… So I think the old saying about buying IBM because it didn’t get you fired is misplaced. If the cakes stopped coming off the production line, you rightly did get fired.
Garmin only announces products when they are ready for (almost) immediate delivery. We’ll see what their “big announcement” will be later this week. They can afford to do that. Avidyne announces product (too) long in advance and then puts people off with the wait for availability
Yes – that damaged Avidyne’s reputation, but they got away with it because that is how aviation is In any other business people would just laugh…
Avidyne also get a lot of “underdog” vote, especially in the USA where they don’t like dominant vendors.
In the meantime, Garmin has been using the time to (secretly) develop competitive capability and announcing just before Avidyne availability.
With a software-upgradable product, that is 100% to be expected. I am sure a GTN750 could have a button labelled “IFR540 emulation” Actually I bet some Garmin programmer has done exactly that, for a laugh
I’m not sure avionics shops are the best place to get an opinion on equipment, although their experience can be one element of consideration if they have enough to really compare.
IME, the thing which avionics shops dislike most is getting caught up between an irate customer and an unhelpful / unreliable vendor. So they do tend to stick to reliable products. And, since most shops are little more than wiremen, they like good dealer support.
When one sees e.g. UK avionics shops doing a reasonable number of IFD540 installs, as is happening now, that is a very good sign for numerous reasons.
One Avidyne installation compared to hundreds of Garmin’s is not really valid.
I don’t think I quoted one Avidyne installation. I also said that “recent feedback indicates that this situation is much improved.”
A shop’s reputation for quality of staff and work is more important when making a choice of installer.
Of course, but in Europe there isn’t a lot of choice if the work you are having done is nontrivial.
