Unfortunately my brand new Aspen Max failed with less than 10 hours on it. The failure mode was concerning too, the unit just powered itself down to a black screen. After a minute or so, it booted itself up again, aligned itself, then shut itself down again. It did this a few times and eventually just gave up to a dead black screen. If it's a power issue, it should give a warning and run on the battery. If it's like an ADC failure or pitot etc, it should red X the affected items. This thing is a lot of functions in one box and for it to just suddenly decide to shut itself down to a black screen of death without warning is unacceptable in my opinion. It's also making me totally rethink my panel strategy, at a minimum I now want another backup HSI. We've had a ton of very widespread fog lately which often means the only way down is a low approach. Without my Aspen I have no CDI.
Also ATC reported they lost my mode C, presumably the Aspen is providing altitude info to the GTX-345 transponder. Since I'm under the modeC (and ADSB) veil, I am basically AOG (aircraft on ground / grounded). I'll probably change that to a Garmin blind encoder. Fortunately Aspen was responsive to my avionics shop and sent a replacement, so hopefully will get this resolved soon. In the mean time I had to take the PC12 on my Thanksgiving trip to Borrego Springs. Oh well, #firstworldproblems It actually worked out great because the turbulence (as usual) was fierce through Banning and the PC12 made it quick and easy.
