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Heard a lead tech say digital bus systems are just a fad
Last month at a hangar in Phoenix, one of the senior guys told me ARINC 429 is outdated and the industry is moving to AFDX for everything. Has anyone else seen older planes getting retrofitted with digital backbone upgrades more often lately?
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jamie8041mo ago
Last year I helped a buddy put a 429 bus in a 727 that had been sitting in the desert for a decade. The wiring was still good after we cleaned up the connectors and swapped out a few pins. That system runs all day and doesn't complain. AFDX is nice for new builds but you're paying engineer rates to lay fiber in a 1980s airframe, and that math rarely works out unless the plane is gold plated. If you're not flying a brand new long haul jet, stick with what you can fix with a multimeter and a soldering iron.
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ivan_murphy801mo ago
Yeah, I don't buy that. 429 has been around forever for a reason, it's rock solid. AFDX is fancier but the retrofit cost is still too high for most operators to bother with.
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