-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Andraka ]
Posted At: Saturday, January 20, 2007 10:47 PM
Posted To: rec.aviation.ifr
Conversation: Commencing a GPS approach from a fix other than the FAF
Subject: Commencing a GPS approach from a fix other than the FAF

....

Avionics for GA is a tough business to begin with. You've got a very
limited market to begin with: only a few thousand new planes per year
on
a good year, with only a chance that the manufacturer will select your
gear, and a retrofit market that isn't all that much bigger. What is
it
about 200,000 aircraft total. Of those, a few percent will upgrade
their avionics in a given year. Say by some miracle, you catch 20% of
the market, that's still only 40000 units and once you sell those
units,
those aircraft won't be upgrading again for probably at least 10
years.
that means, only a couple thousand units per year sales. It is hard
to spread out the production and design costs enough to make the unit
affordable enough for folks to buy it and yet profitable enough for
the
business to break even or (gasp) make a profit. That, folks is the
real
problem. Fixing it requires either a lot more people buying airplanes
(don't hold your breath for that), or having the avionics boxes have
some other higher volume market that can share much of the development
(eg. boating and automotive GPS supports our aviation GPS by using a
common platform).

Maybe the solution would be to design a system that meets not only GA
purposes but also 121 needs. I'm willing to be the increase in volume
could more than offset the delta in engineering costs. After all, we
work in the same system with usually the same minimums. If the
supporting infrastructure (electric bus, rack space, etc) could be made
similar there should be an economy of scale.

Even if Garmin was to make remote control/display an option so the
equipment could be mounted in an avionics bay, that additional
engineering would probably be justified by the increased volume for a
single design.