Emergency AD on KI-300 and SAI-340A

Does anybody have an idea how prevalent these units are?
 
And that's why you don't buy B/K avionics. I considered buying one as a KI-256 replacement a while ago, and decided we'd be better off staying away from B/K.
 
I’m not too familiar with this unit but a quick glance online found this comment from summer of 2019, “I don't think you'll ever see a King KI-300 in the wild. It is based off of the Sandia Quattro 340A which has a horrendous failure rate.”

Any back story as to why it took so long for an AD to be issued for a known issue? Is it simply because consumers didn’t present it to the FAA as a critical safety issue and/or they were slow to discover it?
 
TrueCourse said:
Any back story as to why it took so long for an AD to be issued for a known issue?
Click to expand...
Considering it's an Emergency AD which are fairly rare and follow special rules, my guess would be that the original 3 reports stated were from recent incident/accident investigations and when they pulled up the SDR/MDR database they saw the other 54 failures. Since the EAD action prohibits IFR/Nite VFR or ferry flights, my bet is there will be some sort of follow up action shortly.
 
Sandra 340A customers have been reporting issues with these units for years. I nearly bought one, bu got waived off. Supposedly when BK licensed the 340 for their KI-300, the big delay in coming to market was due to a significant software rewrite. Looks like there are still fundamental issues.
 
Fully TSOd for certified aircraft. There are probably experimental avionics more reliable. :rolleyes:
 
Several years ago (pre-G5) I bought a Sandia Quattro 340A for my Arrow. Unit failed within a few hours (pitch would slowly change with turns). Sandia replaced it and same effect. Third one also failed. The tech I worked with at Sandia was very helpful in sending replacements but after the third failure I gave up and "gave" it to my avionics shop and had them install a G5. Later found out that the helpful tech had quit Sandia.
 
I can't believe anyone would have installed one of these in the last couple of years. The failures are apparently common, and severe:

img_0888-1-jpeg.87245


ki-300-bad-jpeg.82533


22BF5406-C340-4227-9D9F-28C3592FB4B4.jpeg.0eb3b6dae15137cb4dfc8d33cd730176.jpeg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top