Because Owning And Flying Your Beechcraft Can Be Done Safely AND For Less Money!
  AV8OR Pireps

 

Are you thinking about a CSOB portable aviation GPS/Weather Box?

 

Well here's some info on the Bendix-King AV8OR box that debuted last year.

 

 


 

 

 

 


 

See the BK pdf brochure HERE

 

Here is a pirep on the unit from Bob S. of Sedona, AZ

 

I installed the AV8OR in early January and up till this week the unit has been flawless. I installed this as a CSOB way of getting weather and airways into my panel (also have a GNS530).

 

On Monday, The unit displayed a warning message (fatal error, buffer overrun, program terminated. "gofly.exe" I rebooted and all was well for about 5 minutes when this happened again. (and again) I called BK and after being passed around to a few different departments, I got with one of the software engineers. who spent a lot of time on the line with me trying to determine what was going on. He had also received another call the same day with the same issue.

 

Turns out that WX Worx, was broadcasting a corrupted TFR file which was causing the buffer to overrun in the AV8OR unit. WX Worx fixed this and BK will have a software update very soon that will change the way the unit handles corrupt files. All in all I am very impressed with the responsiveness of BK and their willingness to work thru this issue with me. They seemed very interested in having input from the actual users on what we like and don't like. A test flight yesterday confirmed that the issue was resolved. 

 

As a basic Pirep. The unit till this episode has been rock solid in its performance. The touch screen is the way to go. Very easy to use, even in rough air. (I expect that future handhelds will all go to this method of input. You can also slide the screen display anywhere you want (to see what is ahead of you) simply by placing your finger on the screen and sliding it to where you want to look. I now have airways, weather, plus a lot of other features I have yet to explore for much less than 1amu. It doubles as a car unit, movie player (and music) but I haven't used these features. Display is nice and crisp.

 

Cons

 

I would like to see a big brother that has a larger display (my old eyes). Perhaps something similar to a MX 200 size. The current display is about the size of a GNS 430. There is no way to display charts, approaches etc. This is a VFR navigator. So if I want to add ele charts, this means another unit to mount.

 

The BK website is a mess. They are working on this and hope to have a site for the AV8OR that is unique to that product.

 

Data downloads are cumbersome to get to the actual download site, but fairly straight forward after you finally find where to download from.

 

All in all for the money I highly recommend this unit. The post sale support has been very good.

 


 

The big brother to the AV8OR, is the AV8OR ACE! MSRP $1,999

 

 

Here's a pirep from Michael M. on his AV8OR ACE experience:

 

I purchased the Av8tor Ace (the big one)... seems to be easy to understand and user friendly.... love the GPS referenced approach plates... I was backing it up with my 530W in the clouds shooting approaches and found it to be great....
 
Would recommend it highly...

 


 

Keep those pireps coming folks. Click here to Email me your AV8OR pirep.

 

web statistics