Greg has received lotsa calls from small-panel types. He told me that
he personally doesn't think that the 8"
display is big enough for all the info that's being crammed into it, and
I think he's right. There are displays
he could use that don't have the huge frame of the one he's using now,
but finding daylight-readable 10"
displays is hard. And expensive. Those displays are probably close to
$1K apiece.
I'd agree with Fred that too much is riding on the reliability of a
single display. For my two cents, I'd like to
see the flight instruments, moving map, and engine instruments brought
out to separate displays. The
engine instruments are kinda crammed in around the bottom edges of the
flight display, and they need to
be bigger. Also, that display is a logical place to put aircraft
systems/status pages.
A high-reliability approach would be to use some of the HDTV format
displays being used in car nav displays
in either a vertical or horizontal orientation tiled across the panel.
Hasn't somebody already done
something like that? Oh yeah, Sierra Flight Systems. Of course, you'd
have to modify the gear
lever if you have a monowheel.
I'm really impressed with what Greg has been able to do. However, I'm
scared that he is selling the box
for about half the money he should to ensure that Blue Mountain will be
around to support EFIS-1 when it breaks.
Or when he gets sued by the relatives of a pilot whose plane hits a
mountain when his EFIS-1 goes dark in IMC.
Engine monitors aren't life-threatening when they fail. Nonredundant
flight instruments are. Glass cockpits
that you'd stake your hide on but not require a second mortage to
install are still several years away.
I would be suprised if Garmin (who recently announced their intent to
enter the market with their purchase of
Sequoia Instruments) -or whoever- will be able to better Sierra Flight
Systems' EFIS-2000 installed
price.
Personally, I'll install a Skymap IIIC for navigation, an ACS-2002 for
engine monitoring, and electrical
traditional PFI. Then, like Fred says, I'll watch the market for
realistic EFIS glass.
Grumblingly yours,
Shaun
A207
----- Original Message -----
From: John Reddy
Subject: Re: EFIS/One
Actually they had one at Oshkosh that was intermediate in size between
the two. It was just a bit smaller than the standard display. It
showed all of the information including the heading and moving map GPS.
But it wasn't clear if they were planning to make it generally
available.
----- Original Message -----
From: DJA727@aol.com
Subject: Re: EFIS/One
In a message dated 01/06/2002 9:19:24 AM Pacific Standard Time,
europa_a213@mindspring.com writes:
At Oshkosh they were showing a slightly smaller (8"?) screen that
I think would fit nicely on the Europa panel and still be readable with
the full display. I would be interested if they are still planning on
offering it. The standard 10" screen they offer will not fit on an
unmodified Europa panel, but could be made to fit if the step under the
pilot side was built out flush with the rest of the panel.
tygh
The smaller display if EFIS lite - it is a better fit to the panel,
but does not include heading information -- as far as I know. They
designed it to be a backup display. If they included the 6 basic flight
parameters, I would buy one myself.
Dave Anderson
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