3 thoughts on “Avidyne versus Garmin G1000 comparison (airplane nerds only)”

  1. It will be interesting to see how Avidyne fares in the marketplace. Unless they develop some NAV/COM capabilities, it seems like the only real exit strategy would be selling to, say, Honeywell.

    After all, every Avidyne installation requires 10-30k of Garmin equipment just to make it work.

  2. I was catching up my reading and came across and Aviation Consumer article that addressed this exact point.

    They liked both systems, and pointed out some differences that I’d not heard of. For example, the G1000 altitude bug can only be set in increments of 100 feet, as opposed to ten feet with the Avidyne. They also mentioned that the AHRS on the G1000 can align in flight better than that of the Avidyne.

    But the thing that jumped off the page for me was that the G1000 system consists of individual LRUs on a bus. These LRUs can be changed in the field.

    Appearently the Avidyne system is more or less a monolith, and has few line replaceable parts.

    The example given was that a dead screen on a G1000 costs a mere $10,000 to replace, because they replace just the screen, while a dead screen on an Avidyne requires replacing the entire box at a cost of $40,000.

  3. Some things that concerns me and that no one else seems to pick up on –

    With Avidyne there is no guarantee that when you send in your panel for repair that they will send you back your panel. They can opt to send you a “replacement” unit but there is no guarantee that it will be a factory fresh unit. It may be a unit that has been rebuilt. So you can send in a unit with 125 hours and get something back that has 4999 hours on it, and that has been into the shop for repairs 23 times and you will have no clue as to any of that. And that is what you will fly with. Also, because the cost of repairs is so high, almost everyone is going to have to pay for the extended warranty after the 2 years runs out – at a coust of what? $200 to $ 300 a month depending how many years you opt to buy – $2500 to $3600 a year ??? I owned a Piper Warrior and a Dakota with about 4000 hours on both and I never spent more then $3600 on avionics repair or insturment on both aircraft combined in all the time I owned them (not including IFR certs).

    I wrote to Garmin and asked them to address my concerns about how they will handle repairs on a unit during and after warranty, and in particular could I rely on getting back my panel after repairs, or if they can not repair it will the replacement be a factory fresh unit or another rebuilt unit. And if the unit is not a factory fresh unit, will the service history be provided so I could opt to either accept the unit or reject it as a replacement. They did not respond……….Hmmmm. Wonder why…..

    What gets me is that no one else out there seems to have picked up on these issues and to my mind these should be considerations that should be foremost in everyone’s minds.

    Now on the other end of the sprectum is Chelton. Their units are certified to Level A failure rate by the FAA which in practical terms means that the probability of a unit failing is something like 1 in 1 billion – so with a Chelton unit the repair costs is really not an issue as far as I am concerned.
    Avidyne, in my telephone call to them, would not disclose their failure rate. They said that they did not “keep those records”. Clearly this is nonsense – you divide the numbers of units that come in for repair by the number of units you sold and that gives you a fundamental basis for determing your realiability.

    I wanted to buy a new Piper Saratoga but walked away because I do not want to mess with the Avidyne panels. I looked at the G36 but I have issues with the G1000 too. And the G36 has no alternator backup, and on top of that the cabin is the old 42 inches wide standard from the 60s. I would like more room in the cockpit at this point in my life style. And then there is the overriding replacement problem discussed above.

    I am seriously looking at a new Commander 115 = they are going to provide the Chelton as standard equipement and you will also have the steam gauges with the vacuum pumps, along with dual alternators. Everyone seems to be going yippie yippie over the Avidyne and Garmin panels but I think the Commander approach is by far the best of both worlds. Chrisibfg@yahoo.com

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