KX-155 repair history

We're having some problems with our KX-155 where it intermittently stops
navigating. Several attempts at repair have failed. A friend has a KX-155 that
won't transmit. Another friend had a series of repairs on his KX-155.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold standard in
NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the best there is?

Thanks,

Dave

Dave Butler wrote:


The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold standard
in NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the best there
is?

I wouldn't say the 155 is the gold standard. They were 15 years ago.
Now King is getting dangerously close to Narco territory. They have
been so hopelessly outclassed the last decade in GPS and Comm technology
I'd be suprised if they can come back. I have an Apollo SL40 in my 182
and love it, the SL30 is the same thing with a Nav. Now however they
are a part of the Garmin family and are still being sold.

Newps wrote:


Dave Butler wrote:


The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold
standard in NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the
best there is?


I wouldn't say the 155 is the gold standard. They were 15 years ago.
Now King is getting dangerously close to Narco territory. They have
been so hopelessly outclassed the last decade in GPS and Comm technology
I'd be suprised if they can come back. I have an Apollo SL40 in my 182
and love it, the SL30 is the same thing with a Nav. Now however they
are a part of the Garmin family and are still being sold.


I thought they were attractive and have seen some good reviews of them. They are
listed on the Garmin web site under "discontinued products".
http://www.garmin.com/aviation/produ...l#discontinued

In article ,
Dave Butler wrote:

We're having some problems with our KX-155 where it intermittently stops
navigating. Several attempts at repair have failed. A friend has a KX-155
that
won't transmit. Another friend had a series of repairs on his KX-155.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold standard in
NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the best there is?

Thanks,

Dave

The KX-155 was the gold standard 10 or 15 years ago. These days,
they're getting pretty long in the tooth. My club has stopped doing any
repairs to our KX-155's, and is replacing them with newer stuff when
they need any kind of repair. If you finally solve whatever problem is
vexing you now, 6 months from now, you'll lose a couple of segments on
the display, or something else will go wrong.

Our radio of choice these days for a stand-alone nav/com is the
Apollo/Garmin SL-30. Even if you don't take advantage of the system
integration features which let it talk to a GPS, it's got a bunch of
really nice features like dual frequency monitor, built-in CDI, auto
ident for navaids, etc. And it takes up about 1/3 the space in your
panel that the KX-155 does.

In article ,
Dave Butler wrote:

Newps wrote:


Dave Butler wrote:


The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold
standard in NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the
best there is?


I wouldn't say the 155 is the gold standard. They were 15 years ago.
Now King is getting dangerously close to Narco territory. They have
been so hopelessly outclassed the last decade in GPS and Comm technology
I'd be suprised if they can come back. I have an Apollo SL40 in my 182
and love it, the SL30 is the same thing with a Nav. Now however they
are a part of the Garmin family and are still being sold.


I thought they were attractive and have seen some good reviews of them. They
are
listed on the Garmin web site under "discontinued products".
http://www.garmin.com/aviation/produ...l#discontinued

Huh? The SL-30 and SL-40 aren't discontinued. The list of discontinued
products is at the bottom of the page.

Dave Butler wrote:

I thought they were attractive and have seen some good reviews of them.
They are listed on the Garmin web site under "discontinued products".
http://www.garmin.com/aviation/produ...l#discontinued

I saw that too and thought they were discontinued but then I looked at
the other products on the page which clearly are not discontiuned. So
it's a poorly designed site. The SL30/40 are still available.

Roy Smith wrote:
In article ,
Dave Butler wrote:


Newps wrote:


Dave Butler wrote:


The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold
standard in NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the
best there is?


I wouldn't say the 155 is the gold standard. They were 15 years ago.
Now King is getting dangerously close to Narco territory. They have
been so hopelessly outclassed the last decade in GPS and Comm technology
I'd be suprised if they can come back. I have an Apollo SL40 in my 182
and love it, the SL30 is the same thing with a Nav. Now however they
are a part of the Garmin family and are still being sold.


I thought they were attractive and have seen some good reviews of them. They
are
listed on the Garmin web site under "discontinued products".
http://www.garmin.com/aviation/produ...l#discontinued


Huh? The SL-30 and SL-40 aren't discontinued. The list of discontinued
products is at the bottom of the page.

Ahhhh. Good. Thanks.

Dave Butler wrote in message ...
We're having some problems with our KX-155 where it intermittently stops
navigating. Several attempts at repair have failed. A friend has a KX-155 that
won't transmit. Another friend had a series of repairs on his KX-155.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold standard in
NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the best there is?

Thanks,

Dave


Hi Dave
The first thing you can do is to swap out your KX-155 with a known
good one and see if the problem stays with the aircraft or the radio.
Perhaps your friend that has the transmit problem.

Ken Pruchnick wrote:
Dave Butler wrote in message ...

We're having some problems with our KX-155 where it intermittently stops
navigating. Several attempts at repair have failed. A friend has a KX-155 that
won't transmit. Another friend had a series of repairs on his KX-155.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold standard in
NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the best there is?


Hi Dave
The first thing you can do is to swap out your KX-155 with a known
good one and see if the problem stays with the aircraft or the radio.
Perhaps your friend that has the transmit problem.

Hi Ken,

Yes, exactly, thanks. We're working out how to do just that.

My reason for posting was thinking more long term. We probably have a panel
upgrade coming up in the next year. I was looking for input on whether to stay
with the KX-155 or jump to some other technology. We'll probably have a NAV/COMM
integrated in whatever GPS we buy, but I'd like to have one NAV/COMM that's
standalone, not integrated with anything. Just for simplicity of operation. So I
was wondering whether that should be a KX-155 or something else.

Dave

Just curious... Are you asking about the KX-155 or the newer KX-155A?
The 155A came out about 4 years ago. The KX155 is no longer sold.


Dave Butler wrote:
We're having some problems with our KX-155 where it intermittently stops
navigating. Several attempts at repair have failed. A friend has a
KX-155 that won't transmit. Another friend had a series of repairs on
his KX-155.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that the KX-155 is the gold standard
in NAV/COMMs, but I have these anecdotal gripes. Are they the best there
is?

Thanks,

Dave