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#1
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My experience has been (and I think that if you do a Search you will find that others agree) that the 400A is a fine autopilot. It is, however, subject to aging, in the sense that with time (35 years for a 1973 model) the electronic components drift/atrophy and service is required. The most common fault is leaking capacitors, which is an easy repair. You can still find shops that fix them, and the equipment can be removed (1/2 is under the throttle/props/mixture levers, the other half is overhead and towards the rear, behind the headliner) and sent out to be serviced.
On this subject, perhaps the most knowledgeable person on this Board is Pete Somers and I hope he'll jump in here with his views. BTW, my Search on autopilot and 400A yielded many threads with good info. Ernie 
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#2
02-26-09, 03:05 AM
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Dave
As Ernie has said the 400A is a good A/P and like all things subject to aging, however there is plenty of shops to repair them and still a lot of spares available. It works fine and easy to use. Stick with it, you will find it an excellent system. Pete
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#4
02-27-09, 01:02 AM
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I'm curious about the same if I hook an Aspen Pro into the autopilot.
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#5
02-27-09, 10:53 AM
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If you hook this system up to the A/P and you have a Course/Heading input and a left/right and operate it in NAV mode should be no problem.
Pete
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#6
02-27-09, 02:57 PM
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Pete, I'm no expert on this, but the "if" in your sentence is significant. I think it may be hard to get the two units to "talk" and "handshake" effectively. And lots of luck finding a shop with experience in marrying a modern GPS with a legacy ARC autopilot. Again, I could be wrong, but could you expand on the difficulty in achieving this?
Ernie
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#7
02-27-09, 03:18 PM
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Sorry Ernie, I did not take the time to think about this one and put it into something that made some sense. But Ok here we go.
In normal NAV mode the 400A takes heading information which on a HSI is provided by the Course (yellow arrow with the L/R bar in the centre on the King system). Left/Right is provided by the NAV system to provide track error. All or most GPS provide a track error signal that can be displayed on a standard CDI for track error, this left/right can be wired through a switch and you will be able to either use NAV or GPS. However you will have to use the No1 NAV system as this supplied the CRS error signal. Hope this make sense Regards Pete
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