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UPGRADING THE EFIS The existing instrument panel has worked very well for the last 5 years.
Surprising me with the
reliability, the only issues have been: 2. The oil temperature sender failed as did the manifold pressure sensor. Both were replaced. 3. Oil pressure LOW LED failed for unknown reasons. 4. The existing moving map software, called Vista from RMS technology, first of all, it is falsely presented as a moving map. In fact the map does not move at, rather a little airplane simple stupidly marches across the screen, and then once in while the map redraws. The company was absolutely unresponsive to suggestions, the program was really difficult to use, required leaving the moving map program in-flight, switch to the equally awkward flight planning program to see details on any map object, then exiting and reloading the map program. EGAD! what a pain. It also had lame inoperative features like "city and street find". Yes, it did display a map, but...It sorely needed replacing! I would not recommend this product to anyone. NEW Software
Along comes Control Vision AnywhereMap XP. These guys make a line of moving map software for in-flight use. I used them many years ago when they introduced their first products, and ran it on a small Cassiopeia. It worked great. They have lots of features, importantly, one called "Safety Cones", where the system monitors your altitude and based on glide ratio you declare, it displays circles around airport that your aircraft is in gliding range of. NEAT! Recent versions have added NEXRAD, METAR, TAF, IR, WINDS ALOFT, LIGHTNING and WX works capability, along with XM radio interfacing to the new WX works receiver. This Rocket will have that capability. In its current form, it will NOT generate the NMEA serial commands to steer the Trutrak Autopilots. They promise it will, with the next release due spring 2008. Later on this important feature. The Anywhere XP map software also generate virtual approaches, collision alerts from obstacle, and terrain, reminds to you extend landing gear, boost pump, off altitude and on and on. You can even search for cheap fuel in-flight! A very capable system.
The old panel has made me
pretty happy as far as reliability goes but upgrades are needed. The Navaid
Devices autopilot has function flawlessly, but I want altitude hold and well
as digital course track. The decision was made to use the digital Trutrak
Digiflight II VS. I've flow several of these auto pilots and always
impressed with the performance. While the NAVAID worked well, it also cost a
lot less, The Trutrak system was EXPENSIVE but worth it for me. Flight Computer
(You can seen the tiny 4 GB flash drive snapped into the IDE connector, as well as the tiny power supply snapped into the motherboard ATX power connector in the picture)
The new computer has more
features, uses less power, is smaller and lighter. Boot up time from "power on" to stable map display is 35 seconds. I programmed the ACPI "PWR BTN" hardware port to turn the thing on and invoke the windows shut down command. A quick press after startup and another after landing manages the windows operation nicely.
A departure from the previous
design sees use of USB technology. The main board has 4 USB ports. One
is reserved for the XM receiver, and two will be remote mounted on the
pilots main instrument panel, right hand side above the key switch.
I/O ports go like this:
2 onboard USB ports - 1: WX
works receiver - 2: unused The existing Flightcom 403D intercom is being replaced with PM 3000 as the Flightcom 403D has a poor audio band pass. This makes the stereo music sound crummy, with frequency response similar to communication audio. Little to no bass or treble. The PM-3000 has great fidelity and takes advantage of the noise canceling headphones. I also installed the Monroy ATD-300 (visible at top of panel) traffic detector (about $500) with audio alert. Injecting the audio from the ATD into the intercom gives aural alerts of traffic nearby AND a readout of the intruder altitude relative to mine. While not a true TCAS type system, it beats the heck out of a visual traffic watch.
DYNON FLightDEK 180 PFD The Blue Mountain EFIS lite is being sold and a newer Dynon FlightDEK 180 is being installed. The 180 has engine monitoring capability along with a proven Primary Flight Display technology. This unit also comes with the optional super bright display, shining at 800 NITS, and internal lithium ion backup battery. It is twice as bright as the previous Dynon units. The Engine monitoring system is also very capable with lots of options, configurations, and alerts. It was important to me to have a backup attitude reference and the Dynon with Trutrak autopilot gives me that. For IFR flight, I would add a third Dynon PFD. Flying IFR without three attitude references i very dangerous. This unit with it's latest firmware will display an eHSI with winds aloft arrow as fed by the flight computer. NEW DISPLAY The new display has higher resolution at 1024x768 vs. the old display of 800x600. The new 10" display, made by DATALUX, cost a whopping $1800. It features a 600 NIT display, with excellent anti reflective coating. It is much easier to see than the previous unit. It also feature wider operating voltage and environmentally sealed enclosure. The interface is VGA and connects directly to the motherboard rear connector. Mounting is via VESA with a picture below.
In the above picture, the VESA mounting system is visible. Two pieces of .090 AL were laser cut along with the rest of the instrument panel. The tow parts are cut/formed and riveted to other small parts to build the mounting system. The entire display mounts to the main panel with 5 flush 6/32 screws. I holds the display firmly in the panel cutout, and still allows the display to float slightly for shock protection. CNC panel The instrument panel was cut by laser at Fowler Sheet Metal in West Palm Beach, FL. They specialize in CNC cutting, bending and punch work. I designed the panel on AutoCAD and emailed it to them, The cut and all the components in .090" AL and they fit perfectly. Here is a link to the AutoCAD .DWG file for my panel. You may find some parts such as the Trutrak cutout, Monroy cutout, VESA mounting brackets, or Datalux XG10 cutout helpful in designing you own panel. Side sub panels are removable and hold thing like flap switches, warning lights and USB connector. Going Away.... The steam gauges, all of them. Also, the ECCS unit, along with it cooling fan and ducting. The new monitor and computer will tolerate much higher temperatures, and during the last 5 years, the highest temperature ever logged was 42 deg C and this is well within the capability of the equipment.
The Redundant Flight Computer
during Burn-in operation. Early testing showed a cooling fan was needed even
though the computer consumed only 20 watts of power. This small 40mm fan was
added. I draws in air and dumps it on top of the main RAM memory, Flash
drives and then to the CPU fan. The box runs dead cold now, Air is exhausted
from the slot visible below USB connectors 3 and 4.
The new panel being held in place. Still a lot of wiring, but most of the difficult wiring was done on the bench.
The TruTrak autopilot works fantastically!. Only a few tweaks of the settings and it track as well as anything I've flown. Holds altitude within 30 feet during turns, and does turbulence well. I made up the little annunciator lights above the Dynon 180. The Master Caution light is driven by the Dynon and has yet to generate a false caution. The device even show % of power and whether ROP or LOP. The FlightDEK 180 is a GREAT device! Little projects remaining include calibrating the airspeed as it reads 7 knots slow, engraving the side sub-panels and new center console fuel panel. It's amazing how many airplanes there are flying around Florida. The Monroy traffic detector only occasionally is not displaying numerous nearby aircraft. The audio feed is working well and really gets your attentions when a nearby aircraft appears.
A side note
here is, the system can be driven by a handheld GPS unit as a backup. The
input (data loader) port for the Dynon to receive firmware updates is
mounted on the side electrical panel. This same port is where the GPS NMEA
signals are introduced to the Dynon for navigation, and the same port also
drives the autopilot. In a backup mode, for instance a main flight computer
failure, I can shut down the main computer, plug the handheld GPS into the
data loader port, and... as you see above, the Dynon and autopilot are
happily taking me home! Even the wind arrow worked! I installed an EFIS Data Source select switch for versatility (picture above)
Finished with new panel overlays. I drew these on Autocad and emailed them to Aircraft Engravers. Perfect as usual from Wayne and crew.
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"Sadly,
artificial intelligence will probably never be a match for natural
stupidity." |
i
