Rant: I chose the older Avidyne setup over the Garmin G3X

I had a 2005 Cirrus SR22 in the shop last month and had to pick between dropping in an Avidyne Entegra R9 from a parts plane or upgrading to a used Garmin G3X system. I went with the Avidyne because the owner was set on keeping costs under $12,000, and the R9 integrated clean with the existing sensors. Six weeks later the display started ghosting on the right side, and I'm wondering if I should have pushed harder for the Garmin even if it meant a higher bill. Has anyone else had long-term luck with these older Avidyne units?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_dakota1mo agoTop Commenter

Read a thread on BeechTalk a while back where a guy had the same ghosting issue on an R9. Said it was a known problem with the early Entegra displays, something about the backlight driver board dying after a certain number of hours. Your 2005 unit is probably right in that age range. The G3X is a total rewire job though, not a simple swap, so your customer's budget call made sense at the time. Sometimes you just get unlucky with older avionics, especially when you're piecing stuff together from a parts plane.

valsullivan1mo ago

Yeah exactly, and those early Entegra boards aren't even repairable half the time so you're just stuck.

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