Avidyne Blog - All Comments

re: Avidyne Digital Autopilot: Attitude Recovery with the Straight & Level Button

Rodney Friend — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:06:47 GMT

Would use of this auto pilot (on) now be recommended in moderate to heavy turbulent conditions over hand flying which is the current norm?

thanks

re: Intuitive Design

Matt Nuffort — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:07:49 GMT

Peter,

Great question. Yes, we have tested the system with color blind pilots, and in the cases we tested we found that color blindness in no way inhibited the pilot from using the system, though no doubt certain elements of the design are lost on some people, depending on what type of color blindness they have. For example, one pilot we tested was legally red/green color blind. He had to take a light gun test with the Boston FSDO to get past the night flight restriction. I flew with him and can attest that he had no difficulty using any element of the system, but he did note the following issues:

• He could not tell the difference between green and yellow on the autopilot annunciators

• He noted that all cyan text appeared white

• The terrain legend blocks did not differentiate greatly, since they are shades of green and brown (combination of red and green)

He had no difficulty differentiating the types of airspace on the map (Class B - blue, Class C - magenta, Class D - blue).

Matt

re: Intuitive Design

Peter King — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:22:58 GMT

Out of curiosity, have you tested the system with a color-blind pilot? I heard recently about a student like that who could not understand the images in the Perspective manual, but could see the user-interface just fine on the LCD display.

It would be nice to know a priori if someone who was color-blind would have difficulty with your user interface.

re: Customer Focused Culture

Robert Miller — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:43:32 GMT

There are great articles on the capabilities of the R9 and especially Turbo Bob, but little on the company. No one has asked me to write this and I get nothing from Avidyne. Remeber the ol days in 03 with all the problems with the PFD's and also lack of good customer support. THAT HAS ALL CHANGED. Since I am one of the first to convert we have had a few problems as in any new product. We had an issue with the #2 IFD about 7;00 pm and that night I was talking to one technical support and one higher management. They called again the next day and I took the plane to Dallas for evaluation. The tech flew to Dallas on the weekend and was there Monday morning. Not only is it repaired but I get follow up phone calls as to why and what the fix is and will receive a written report. I have contact with numerous people with Avidyne and they are all busting their rear ends to have a good dependable product. If anyone has problems and need a contact call me and I will be more than happy to help. With these infant problems we must be patient and I bet the repairs they did for me will keep others from even experiencing similar issues. Have you ever gotten a thank you card from a company rep. who you have dealt with for over a year. I received one from Avidyne and it was very appreciated as that is a rare event. For those still on the fence about the company I give a thumbs up. It has been a wonderful experience flying R9. Bob 432 634 8101

Bob Miller Turbo G-3 with Air #2804

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This is posted on the COPA forum under Avidyne R9

re: Customer Focused Culture

Stuart McClay Smith — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:40:08 GMT

Mr. Herguth,

I am a Cirrus owner and in my previous life I was the VP responsible for service logistics for Dell Inc. We managed service with largely the same metrics you define in your post. In 2006 and 2007 I had a horrific experience with your company where my same PFD failed over and over again. As you undoubtably know, that really wasn't 5 seperate failures, it was one failure that remained undetected despite numerous tours of your repair facilities. I always found good people at Avidye to lend a sympathetic ear but no satisfaction. At one point I had lost enough confidence in your product that I refused to fly IFR.

During one of my exasperated calls to your service guys I got into a discussion around metrics. I asked your guy if Avidyne measured the return rate on NTF or NDF units We both suspected that your test and diagnostic processes weren't robust enough to reproduce failures experienced in the air. The Avidyne procedure was to return the unit as "repaired" even though no work had been done on the unit past the test bench. I struggled with the exact same issue on computer parts. We would test the parts as "good", add them to our service inventory, just to see those same parts returned again in short order. I had no doubt that the right metric would have led you to the answer sooner.

I have never witnessed such a profound turnaround in customer perception than what Avidyne has achieved over the last two years. Improvements can take several years to register on the customer satisfaction scale. Said another way, you can be good for a long time before the customer finally forgives you. Your company's participation with the Cirrus pilots community is very valuable. It could have been easy for your company to fold your Cirrus tent when Garmin Perspective was picked. You have done an amazing job showing the capabilities of the R9 product even as Cirrus ships Perspective.

Once the economic storm subsides your company should be well poised to capitalize on your new products and customer (pilot) oriented approach. This clearly the makings of a huge success story and will make a great case study someday.

Regards,

Stuart M. Smith

sr22driver@gmail.com

re: Customer Focused Culture

David Schwietert — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:30:11 GMT

Patrick:

Thank you for starting this blog idea. We meet at M7 and had a discussion about a particular problem. Not only were you interested in hearing my story, but you got back to me with results of your investigation. I took notice and I publicly appreciate the changed cultural attitude!

I know in an earlier post that you said that you wouldn't probably respond to comments here, but I would like to throw out an idea for Avidyne to consider. I know that you are new to the COPA community but over the years since 2003 when Avidyne brought out the PFD, there have been many ideas and suggestions from the community on how to improve, as well as things we would like to see brought forth in future revisions. As an example, most of us know that the LOP algorithms on the MFD are faulty. Evidently when TAT worked with you bringing the TN to market, these errors were corrected in their product. However, that leaves the rest of us non-TN users with a 6 year old problem.

While you will find some on COPA who are truly technogeeky oriented, there might be a majority who really believe what the MFD LOP says regarding "best economy". And let us not forget those "newbies" who are going to come into the market without a clue to the problem.

So, my suggestion is to consider starting a dialogue on what some of us "old timers" with the early products would like to see happen......on our way to R9 and above? This is a very exciting time for us all and I know that many of us are rooting for your continued success.

Now about that rumor of a factory FIKI G3 R9 TN22......

re: A message from Matt Nuffort, Senior Product Manager at Avidyne

Matt Nuffort — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:00:04 GMT

Thank you for the comment, Charles. We definitely recognize that not everyone can afford all the bells and whistles that R9 has to offer. For that reason, we are now offering R9 in several different packages, each with progressively more redundancy and functionality. The silver package, for example, includes two new displays and the keyboard but only has a single ADAHRS and the FMS400, rather than the FMS900W. To do everything we want to do with R9, including capabilities like SynVis and EVS, for example, we needed to develop new hardware with higher resolution displays, a partitioned architecture, and more horsepower. We also will continue to offer software upgrades to the current Entegra system, such as we did recently by adding WAAS capability.

re: A message from Matt Nuffort, Senior Product Manager at Avidyne

Charles Barnett — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:38:52 GMT

Great,so let's see upgrades that are genuinely thought out,where we can use existing wiring looms (or perhaps with minor mods) to upgrade at reasonable cost. Five figure sums for avionics upgrades shouldn't be happening in the 21st century.We bought whole planes for less than that not so long ago !

Let's get real,electronics are not so expensive these days.Yes, a question of scale, but let's be a little more reasonable, we aren't all Bill Lear.

I'll upgrade,make it really worth my while though.