Oh no, you’ve let the cat out of the bag Bryan! We already have owners who won’t buy or fly Avidyne because of the AeroPlan language. Now they won’t be flying with Garmin boxes or Jepp navdata either. And ForeFlight is a goner now, too.
What will be left of COPA? [:)]
Not to worry. Nobody reads the dense legalese of licensing agreements with indemnification clauses buried 3 pages in. Even with your post here, they are not going to do it - the language is purposefully lengthy and indecipherable. Trying to read them is an exercise in humiliation for most people. Up until 40 years ago they would have all been quickly tossed as “contracts of adhesion,” but not with today’s judiciary.
As Garmin, Jepp, ForeFlight, and almost every other company in the US has figured out, it’s best to pie their customers while they are under legal (but formerly unenforceable) anesthesia. Avidyne might consider taking the hint.
So not being an expert on any of this, let me then ask the dumb question, if everyone includes the language, and we know the manufacturers get sued, why aren’t owners up in arms over paying to defend the manufacturers? Do they actually pay in practice or is this just some documentation exercise in what-if scenarios?
How many instances can we actually cite of owners paying to defend manufacturers based on these clauses?
I don’t believe it’s ever happened. The language is just there to deter suits. I read the Garmin data licence and while the clauses excluding liability were no surprise, the indemnity was. In that respect at least Avidyne are up front about it.
WOW…I had no idea. Thank you for posting. This certainly cast a different light on the topic. I was wrong in my post. You appropriately corrected me. I will go edit it. Humble pie taste so good.
Still, forcing me to buy an expensive warranty for several thousand dollars to repair a 50.00 part (I am guessing) is not a good way of building customer loyalty. So, that part of my post is unchanged.
Try to get your SIU or DAU repaired. Small box, no warranty available and almost 4 grand to repair. Keeping a FAA certified repair station up to snuff is darned expensive.
I appreciate your open and honest feedback. We’re absolutely working on improvements in our warranty structure and have already made some pretty big improvements with our repair process and support with great results based on our repair satisfaction surveys over the past few months. While we will no doubt make mistakes, we will also work to correct them whenever possible. This is one of the reasons I love this forum/community. We can’t fix what we don’t know and it’s very clear the COPA members let us know
Met you at Migration a couple weeks ago, it was a pleasure. Glad you’ve got your plane & are enjoying it.
When we bought N668CD it had the Aeroplan and we intend to renew (when you transfer the warranty the new owners need to sign the indemnity agreement). One day we turned on the batteries during pre-flight and smoke started coming from the MFD (Avidyne R9), the circuit breaker popped and we turned off the batteries quickly but the MFD was fried internally. Since we had the Aeroplan we had a local avionics tech (recommended by Avidyne) remove the MFD and ship it back for repair. I think it would have been a $7000 repair plus labor if not for the Aeroplan. It took a couple weeks to get it back and then installed, but we only had to pay labor.
When we were shopping for an SR22 I read a lot of logbooks and replacement of the PFD or MFD was not an uncommon logbook entry. Reviewing our logbooks it looks like the DFC100 has been repaired once and the Control Display Unit twice in addition to the MFD failure as described above (the R9 system was a follow on the the original Avidyne/Garmin GNS430 and is a fully integrated system with an FMS, QWERTY keyboard and LCD display in addition to the DFC100 autopilot, all of which are covered by the Aeroplan).
I’m curious to see what the new price and terms of the Aeroplan are going to be but for us it seems worth it.
Thanks for the info! I decided after reading several posted replies to purchase the aeroflex plan and did so last week. Your data reinforces that decision. I thought about waiting for the new plan that Avidyne is looking to roll out soon, but decided that since the timeline for that is not firm I needed to opt for the current aeroflex plan (I purchased the 3k one-year plan that is renewed each year for 1000). I am hoping that when Avidyne rolls out their new plan they offer a transition/change opportunity to current/recent aeroflex folks like me. That might evoke some further discussion from those who might not have had a good experience with Avidyne previously, but I think that in spite of “business realities” of profit margin, costs, litigious risk, etc, people are good and want to do what is fair. [and hope that the Avidyne guys are reading this post ;>)]
One thing I did discover - when updating navdata and chart data for the first time, had a message of insufficient memory. Fortunately I loaded navdata first. Even thought I have 8.1 firmware in the MFD I apparently have the old 512k card. Had to get Jepp to reload my chart coverage and then I had to greatly reduce the area coverage to limit it to about 200k. Avidyne is providing a 2M replacement card to my avionics guy at no charge. Thought that was stand-up, for they could have made me pay for the card.
Now on to whether or not to get a WAAS GPS capability for the LPV approaches. Looking at the IFD440 and the GNC355. …and I now just provided another door for highjacking the thread!!
If you are ever in the Houston area, give me a call. JR
Actually, one of the biggest factors in deciding to go WAAS for navigation is the PFD; you need to be running at least version 7.0 with the “mod 55” hardware upgrade. The software upgrade is expensive, so many people take the opportunity to upgrade their auto pilot to the DFC90, which comes with a PFD update included. If you don’t have the DFC90, you’ll like it.
The manual is just WRONG in some sections, and missing important information in others. Year after year I and others have offered to rewrite it for Avidyne to address these errors; so far nothing.
You can search the forum archives to be sure, but I think 7.x brought in WAAS support, while 8.x added the support for the DFC90. Note there is no relationship between modern PFD and MFD software revisions, so it is perfectly OK to be running 6.x on your MFD with 8.x on your PFD.
The latest MFD releases 8.2.x provide support for ADS-B traffic and weather, specifically with the GTX 345. I’ve tested this release in this configuration with someone else’s aircraft, and it works fine once it is properly wired up and configured.
It does not provide support for “Target Trend”, the “stingers” that show the direction of travel of a traffic target, or show that target’s flight ID. The MFD software I believe has support for “stingers” for use with TIS-A, but some combination of lack of standardization, and communications on the 429 bus versus RS422 seems to be the issue.
There is one interaction between PFD and MFD revisions I am aware of - if you have a DAU equipped aircraft (i.e. glove box, no round engine gauges) you need at least rev 7 on the PFD to get the engine data box displayed on the PFD. A DAU aircraft with rev 6 (and there were a number delivered like that) requires the MFD to be functional as it is the primary engine data display.
I have a 2006 SR20 with 430/420 navs. I opted to upgrade my 430 to WAAS, install the GTX345 Transponder and add flightstream 210 which enables me to send my flight plans between the 430 and Forflight on my iPad. I’ve been very happy with this solution/upgrade. The work was completed in March of this year. I think it cost me about $15K. Be aware that the 430W will not crossfill with the 420 since upgrading the 430 to WAAS. BUT with flight stream I can easily amend the flight plan on my iPad and resend to the 430. You can always add the flight plan to the 420 for back up but you will have to do this manually on the 420. Good luck!
