Reliability of glass in light aircraft
I’m curious what others experience of avionics “upgrades” is.
We have a PA31 which had an altimatic autopilot and now has an Aspen PFD/MFD and Garmin G600 autopilot.
The old HSI/AI did about 40 years good service, and several still going strong as backups (fortunately). The altimatic used to drift slowly off altitude at higher altitudes but was otherwise fine.
The Aspen has failed multiple times in the few years it has been installed. Generally while manoeuvring in IMC. We have been waiting for an OAT probe for months so no TAS or wind. Last week en route to Chambery it lost Attitude, Altitude, Airspeed and Terrain and could not be used to give heading inputs to Garmin.
The G600 was installed a few months ago and apart from failing to capture localisers was pretty good for a single flight to Norway. Sadly it failed middle of North Sea at night on the way back. After months of wrangling and time taken failing to diagnose error Garmin have agreed to send a replacement unit. Ironically we won’t be able to test it until the Aspen is serviceable again.
Fortunately I am reasonably happy hand flying using an old vacuum AI in a less than optimal panel position and compass but it does beg the question why pay a fortune to move the useful instruments to the side.
I would have expected modern bloody expensive certified solid state electronics to be less fickle than 40 year old moving parts and analogue components designed in the 70s.
I am also unimpressed at the responsiveness of Aspen and Garmin.
What are other people’s experiences?