Keying Into a New Market
Dynon and PS Engineering expand to radios
Dynon took the novel approach of building 100 DX15 handheld radios and auctioning them off while it considers whether to introduce it as a standard product. This compact radio fits in virtually any pocket.
THE BIGGEST CHANGE I recall in the small
northern Pennsylvania town I grew up in was
the addition of a fourth traffic light. So it may
seem ironic that I thrive on the constant ebb
and flow of change that surrounds us. As
EAA’s technology columnist, I enjoy learning
about new aviation products and sharing
them with you.
Major changes, especially inflection
points where companies add new product
lines or radically new technologies to older
products, are rare and often impossible to
predict. But when they do occur, consumers
often benefit from quantum leaps in the
price/performance ratio or overall value of
these new products.
Sometimes major change is hard to detect
when it is buried in the clamor of day-to-day
life. That was apparent to me while visiting
Athens, Greece, where I started writing this
column. My wife and I decided to celebrate
our 30th anniversary and meet my daughter,
who lives in Europe, at someplace new to all
of us. While there, I was struck by the massive change that’s occurred there over the last
several millennia.
One day we watched, from a safe distance,
a protest over proposed austerity measures
for dealing with Greece’s enormous debt,
which is about 125 percent of its gross domestic product. While the protestors were
peaceful, I wondered, were we witnessing the
beginning of a major inflection point? Would
another government fall, as happened in
Tunisia and Egypt this spring? Or would the
protest be soon forgotten?
It’s not a huge leap to say that GA avionics
manufacturers experience similar large
swings in their fates and fortunes. Not long
ago, Bendix/King sold the preferred GA
radios. Then along came an upstart named
Garmin that changed the playing field, and
now it dominates the business. More recently,
