Just heard back from Van's last night. Scott repaired my box. Cost is $225 plus shipping. They fixed it in a week. Overall, I'm not thrilled about having the failure but I am happy about Van's service and the fact that they are there, solvent, and available to help out. Thank you.
As an aside, there seems to be more than just a few others who have seen the same failure. I'm wondering if there's any idea on what is causing the short? Is there a component failure? Voltage spike of some sort? I'd feel better about the reliability of the box if I understood more about what caused it to fail.
Randy, I would be interested in seeing the data that makes you think this particular failure is common....
I think there has only been one other failure with a trim control circuit in an AV-50000 box. I am saying that from memory without checking records so I could be off a bit, but with almost 450 Skyview avionics kits produced to date, it is a relatively low number regardless.
Edit - I did a quick check (there are records for every single box serial # listing anything that has ever been done to it) and I was wrong. There is no record of any other AV-50000 box being repair because of a failed trim control circuit. There are a few that required repair because the builder pushed excessively on the trim speed adjustment pot and damaged it, but no others that had an actual failure of the circuit
There have been quite a few people with trim problems (usually found at initial testing) that were convinced that it was caused by the AV-50000, but the actual cause usually ends up being wiring related, etc.
There have been AV-50000 boxes returned to Van's because the customer / builder is certain that it must be the cause of their trim not functioning, but the boxes check out fine and then they are forced to do some actual troubleshooting
) (everyone seems to always assume a problem must be related to a failure inside the box or switch module... in reality, most problems are related to wiring errors or poor/intermittent connections).
As for the cause of your failure? I don't know, but I can say that it is not anything that has been common.
You forgot to mention that the actual repair cost was $75 less than the estimate I gave you