AirVenture 2023: Honeywell KX200 NavComm

By
Larry Anglisano
-
5

The King KX155 and KX165 navcomm radios are two of the most popular navcomm radios of all time and there are plenty of these aging rigs still in service begging for an easy upgrade. Honeywell showed up at AirVenture 2023 with a long-awaited replacement called the KX200. Aviation Consumer Editor Larry Anglisano took a look at the new radio with Honeywell’s Andrew Barker at the Honeywell exhibit.

Larry Anglisano
Larry Anglisano
Larry Anglisano is a regular AVweb contributor and the Editor in Chief of sister publication Aviation Consumer magazine. He's an active land, sea and glider pilot, and has over 30 years experience as an avionics tech.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I will NEVER again buy anything with the Bendix name or from the parent owner Honeywell. Getting my Private rating in late 80’s, I thought the BK name was the gold standard in Avionics. It was back then. My mistake circa 2015 when buying a Bendix King radio.

    My angst is: After spending around $3,500 for a new KX-155A, and matching KI-209 G/S indicator, the 155A worked for about the first 20 hours in my RV-7, during the 40 hour Phase 1 flyoff. It stopped working completely after that. I can’t say if it was or wasn’t the KX-155A unit’s fault. Maybe it got a voltage surge at engine startup (I had an avionic master to prevent this, maybe I forgot once). Or maybe it got too hot due to insufficient cooling. I am giving Bendix/HW some benefit of the doubt. But what was FOR SURE, is that Bendix stopped supporting the units, in terms of spare parts. I sent the unit out to an authorized BK repair shop, and after some examination was told that they could not get parts for it. I was told BK was no longer supporting GA in general. I later sold it for a fraction of the cost as parts on eBay two years ago.

    So, now I get to leave my 2 cents as a “Thank you” to Bendix. I hope sales of this KX200 “long-awaited replacement” (aka “Hey, lets go mine GA again”) fail miserably. But I’m not angry, I long since paid off the loss with the extra paper-route job, on the side of my Aero Engineering job.

    If you are like I once was, in love with the Bendix name for their past glory days, go buy that “long awaited” KX200 radio. Just keep in mind that Honeywell being a very large company can shut off support at a whim, when the margins slip and the sales attention goes back to more lucrative Commercial products.

    Link to list of discontinued products FROM BENDIX KING’S WEBSITE (if not stripped out by the editor):

    https://www.bendixking.com/en/support/discontinued-products

  2. Nice try, but about double the price of competitive products. Slide-ins can be a double-edge sword. It’s nice that the Avidyne IFD series can slide in for a GNS unit, but those are still only twenty years old. This KX200 might be sliding in to some forty years old wiring. Maybe the problem with the old radio was some dried out, cracking up coaxial cables? Wouldn’t be unusual.

  3. Last year I sent a KX-155 in to Brevan Aviation and had them go through it. It got the new LED display and many dielectrics replaced. Works great today, hopefully it will go longer then I will be flying. I spent about $2200 so based on the price of the KX200, think that was money well spent.

    Hi David!

  4. Disappointed that it’s only a 2 year warranty for a product we all expect to last 10+ years. But this is what’s is what Garmin offers too. However, the devil is in the details. What’s included with the warranty? Unfortunately, Honeywell decided not to put their warranty online. So apparently we won’t find out until after the install. Is it parts only only? Parts & labor, shipping? What about service after the warranty expires? Will we be required to ship these to Honeywell for a flat rate charge over $1,500 like Garmin does to us, or will they disclose the schematics and allow the dealers to help us?

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