AV8MX Studio Pro · Davidson Avionics
AV8MX is the pre-installation brain for avionics retrofit shops. It finds what is missing, catches the integration conflicts, draws the architecture, and prices the labor against real industry rates. Built by an installer. Runs entirely on your own machine.
>> Gap it • Check it • Quote it <<
The Old Way
Most retrofit quotes are still built the same way they were twenty years ago. A tech reads the customer wish list, pulls install manuals one at a time, sketches the architecture on a legal pad, and guesses the hours from the last job that felt similar. It works until it does not.
The failures are always the same. A magnetometer nobody scoped. A CAN-only box that needed an adapter. A legacy radio that cannot feed the new display. A backup battery the STC requires. None of it surfaces at the desk. It surfaces with the panel open, the aircraft on jacks, and the customer already quoted.
Then the shop eats it. Unbilled hours, a parts order that should have gone out three weeks earlier, a schedule slipped, and a quote that cannot be defended line by line when the customer asks why it moved. Multiply that by every job in the shop and it is real money.
AV8MX moves that discovery to where it belongs: before the quote goes out.
Capability
Flags every missing component before you quote: standby, magnetometer, backup battery, antennas, audio routing, altitude source, CDI or HSI, position source. Panel-level mission checks for VFR, IFR, rule airspace, autopilot, and engine monitoring catch the gaps no single box declares. Required and recommended are separated, and each gap names the specific STC or install manual to verify against.
Catches cross-integration conflicts a parts list never shows: a legacy radio that cannot feed a modern display, a CAN-only device needing a bridge, two boxes sharing no compatible data bus. Transport-aware, so it knows when a unit needs ARINC-to-CAN bridging even while sharing serial with the navigator. Severity is tiered: blocking, or verify-later when an adapter covers it.
One click produces a branded architecture diagram. Red power, green ground and return, blue data and comms. It shows what feeds what, over which bus, with adapters and implied paths drawn in. This is the layer above the wiring diagram, the drawing that decides what belongs in the harness before anyone builds one.
Per-unit harness-build hours plus whole-task installed benchmarks, cross-checked against published industry survey rates by U.S. region, in dollars. Any line sitting outside the range gets flagged, so the quote holds up under questioning. Phase-aware for split scopes, with provisioning and phasing premium shown. New, customer-supplied, retained, and removal labor are modeled separately, legacy strip-out included.
A dated, referenced, itemized customer proposal covering parts and labor. An internal shop worksheet carrying every advisory and install-manual pointer. Materials and consumables sourcing with multiple vendors per line, so purchasing is not a second research project.
Sixty units across Garmin, Dynon, uAvionix, Avidyne, Aspen, and legacy Bendix/King, deepest on Garmin and Dynon. Any brand extends by editing one data file, no code changes, and a built-in linter validates every edit before it lands.
Privacy
One hundred percent local. One hundred percent offline. No cloud, no telemetry, no accounts, no usage tracking. AV8MX runs on your machine and reaches nothing on its own.
Panel photos your customer sends get scrubbed on import: GPS location, timestamps, and device serials stripped before anything is stored. If you want it reachable from the road, point your own remote access at it. Nothing new gets exposed on your network, because there is nothing to expose.
Pricing
AV8MX Studio Pro
$299/month
Quoted/shop
At a national average install rate near $144 an hour, a Shop License runs about two billable hours a month. One caught gap pays for the year.
Questions, demos, custom packages: Av8Mx@DavidsonAvionics.com
Talk to us
Tell us what your shop runs and what you need it to do. A person reads this and answers.
AV8MX exists because Davidson Avionics needed it and nothing on the market did the job. It is a rules engine that understands avionics architecture, not a spreadsheet with a logo. Bring it into your shop.