Charlie,

Will GRT customize the engine monitor to accommodate the requirements of a rotary (and yes, I realize you fly a Lyc)? Many years ago when I was shopping for a monitor the answer I got was no so I passed on GRT. But that may have changed.

Mike Wills

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Charlie England" <ceengland@bellsouth.net>
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 6:59 PM
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Glass Cockpit

VFR or IFR? For pure VFR, almost anything would be fine.

My primary reason for an SNF trip this year was to get face to face time with the EFIS companies in an attempt to understand what each will/won't do. Turns out there are significant differences among even the major players. For instance, the Trutrak EFIS can't directly control their own Trutrak autopilot heads; you must hook the servos directly to the EFIS (loss of redundancy). The Dynon with servos has the same loss of redundancy issue. IIRC, at one point, the Dynon required GPS (external) data to keep the EFIS oriented, but I've heard that they have since fixed that.

I didn't look at the Advanced Flight Systems stuff; too expensive for me, & I didn't see the MGL (South Africa) guys.

I was pleasantly surprised at the Grand Rapids Sport. It will listen to any GPS, it can do an angle of attack calculation without extra air sensors, it can drive a Trutrak autopilot head (redundancy; if the EFIS dies the Trutrak can still fly the plane), even the cheapest model with no synthetic vision still has a flight director and 'highway in the sky' boxes to guide you to a runway, a database of all FAA data (waypoints, obstructions, terrain, frequencies, etc) is available through GRT. Free. Forever. (Keeping a Garmin 430 current can cost as much as $1600 a year, over half the cost of the GRT Sport.)  The one thing I didn't like was that when you ask it to show you freqs for a new area/destination, the full screen goes black & the info is presented in white. I pointed out that losing flight data while tuning the radio was not a good idea & that they could instead put the freq data where the engine data normally resides, the rep (one of the engineering types at GRT) immediately started taking notes He was accustomed to having 2 screens & they hadn't thought about low budget fliers like me. He gave me the impression that there would soon be some software revisions available to GRT EFIS owners.

I'm sure the game will change again within a week or two, but for now it looks like the GRT would give me the most bang for my buck. A touch over $4,200 US will get 1 screen, an engine monitor/display which can display its data on the EFIS screen, and all the engine probes with fuel flow for a 4cyl engine. The EFIS alone is about $3,000.

I'm sure there are issues that I didn't think to even ask about (I'm not yet instrument rated), so don't accept this as a complete evaluation.

Charlie


On 4/25/2010 6:23 PM, Tracy Crook wrote:

Dynon and Grand Rapids Technologies both have good reputations.  Wish I'd bought either one of those instead of Bluemountain   :-(

Tracy

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 7:16 PM, George Lendich <lendich@aanet.com.au <mailto:lendich@aanet.com.au>> wrote:

    Chaps,
    I'm enquiring for a buddy, who is considering glass cockpit (
    GC)displays and is interested in the Dynon product for his light
    Sport Jabiru.
    Any feed back welcome on any of the GC products, their reliability
    and value for money.
    George ( down under)

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