The eGyro-3 runs off ship’s power and is small enough to Velcro to the panel. It’s sunlight readable.

by Ken Ibold

Pilots tend to be paranoid about equipment and even more paranoid about equipment failures, something which fuels an enormous market for back-up devices that would enable the flight to soldier on safely should anything important crap out.

Joining the fray in recent years have been electronic flight instruments that use tiny solid-state gyros and accelerometers to determine attitude, which is then displayed on a personal digital assistant. While the systems have worked adequately in previous tests (see February 2003 Aviation Consumer), they have fallen short of mechanical gyros when exposed to unusual attitudes and have contributed more than their share of cockpit clutter because of the wires involved…