Most Common Squawks on the Avidyne EX500 Series MFD

April 2015

We have been servicing Avidyne Corporation EX-500 and EX-600 MFDs (multi-function displays) for nearly 10 years at the Duncan Aviation Component Repair Shop in Lincoln, NE. During this time we have serviced many units, gaining a lot of experience.

Below are the three most common squawk items.

1. Encoders. The knobs (encoders) on the front of the unit are one of the highest failure items on the Avidyne units. The squawk typically appears when the function screens will not advance to the next page or will skip pages.
2. Batteries. The Avidyne EX500 units are equipped with 10-year batteries. As the battery begins to fail, the unit clock becomes inaccurate and stops syncing with the universal GPS clock. When this happens, your XM weather may become unusable.
3. Memory card. The charts and navigation databases have gotten so large that the initial memory cards installed on these units are not big enough to hold all of this data, if there are multiple failed segments on the memory card.   We replace a lot of the flash drives. The replacement flash drives now being installed are 2GB, compared to original 512MB memory cards.

If you begin to experience any of these squawks, it is time to send in your unit for service and repair.

Duncan Aviation also services Avidyne Flightmax, ATD-150, and MHD-300.