Note to anyone hoping to cash in on the next big thing in aviation: Dont get involved in anything to do with color cockpit displays for just as soon as youre sure youve got the slickest glass panel this side of the Boeing R&D department, the nerdy kid next door will roll something better out of his basement skunk works.
Or so it seems. At this years annual EAA AirVenture show at Oshkosh, the color cockpit display is the ubiquitous gadget du jour, popping up like ants at a picnic. And these arent just any cockpit displays, but serious and practical contenders that may spell doom for the venerable steam gauge.
As for prices, to avoid hyperventilating, think not in raw dollars but in upgrades priced as a percentage of your airplanes worth. When the avionics invoice exceeds the Blue Book value, its time to stop.
This year, besides the displays, the buzzword seems to be expanded capability, including datalink weather and traffic, a design trend that appeared as pie-in-the-sky when color MFDs surfaced six years ago but looks real now.
Eclipse Tour de Force
None of the displays we saw at OSH were more impressive than that planned for the new Eclipse personal jet, whose ambitious presence continues to define whats new in GA. Last year, Eclipse had a wingless feel-good mock-up for show goers; this year they added a full-size model standing on its gear, plus an improved cabin mock-up that gave a detailed glimpse at the airplanes stunning avionics.
The panel is edge-to-edge with three giant flat-panel displays, a primary flight display for each pilot plus an enormous center stack map/multifunction display. We were impressed with both the size and crispness of the displays but we sense a speed bump ahead: Each pilot has his own keyboard and its not just a couple of function keys and a toggle but a full-boat QWERTY job. Eclipse said the airplane would be highly automated and theyre not backing off. Computer geeks will welcome this; stick-and-rudder salts will doubtless need some indoctrination. Eclipse continues to move smartly through the air castle stage and claims to be on track for cutting metal this fall to roll out the first flight article before AirVenture 2002. The first customer delivery is planned for 2004. Other than minor schedule slippage, nothing weve seen thus far suggests that Eclipse cant walk the walk, although we continue to doubt the low-ball price point of $837,500. To quote their new promo jingle, We can and we are. As for us, we’ll see. Contact Eclipse at 505-245-7555/www.eclipseaviation.com.
Trickle Down
As with NASAs space ventures, the assumption is that big dollar projects like Eclipse inevitably trickle down technology to the hangar rats at Mud Flap Muni and, indeed, its true. Elsewhere in this issue, we report on the Meggitt Magic glass displays installed in the Piper Meridian.
At OSH, we saw a demo of this system installed in a new Cessna 182. Its not that Meggitt has its eye on glassing up piston singles, but there are plenty of twin turboprop owners who wouldnt think twice about dumping a tired old Collins HSI/ADI with a high-tech LCD pair. At $53,900 to start, Meggitts Magic is a mere trifle in a three-quarter million dollar turboprop or even a new Baron.
Whether Meggitt goes downscale with a less expensive variant for the piston crowd may be moot, since other manufacturers will. One of the interesting low-end glass packages we saw this year is an LCD DG/AI pair from long-time instrument maker Sigma Tek.
Just think of the conventional instruments rendered in LCD-type color, fitting in the same holes and with a few extra keys and switches; thats what Sigma Tek has in mind.
The target price is under $10,000, according to Sigma Tek, and unlike the current market leader in affordable EFIS, Sandel, Sigma Teks instruments will be just-the-basics glass, no storm dots, no nav data, no fancy arc views. (Contact Sigma Tek at 316-775-6373 and Meggitt at 603-669-0940/www.meggitt.com.
The intriguing thing about Sigma Teks glass is that it will obsolete one of the companys primary products: The engine-driven vacuum pump. The displays will be driven not by an external electromechanical remote gyro but by a solid- state inertial gyro package of the sort made by Crossbow Technology.
Crossbow is marketing an all-in-one remote gyro package that uses inexpensive solid state silicon ring gyros to sense roll, pitch and yaw and then outputs that to the display of your choice. The price, says Crossbow, will be in the $7000 to $8000 range, with certification underway now. The IMU box is half the size of a shoebox and can be mounted anywhere. Contact Crossbow at 408-324-4840/www.oxbow.com.
Proving that solid-state inertial guidance is now cheap enough for even the most skinflint homebuilder was Icarus Instruments, we’ll known for its niche-within-niche altitude alerters and nav displays. Using a solid-state gyro box from Sellers Aviation (contact www.pcflightsystems.com) outputting to an ordinary PDA-a Compaq IPAQ-Icarus has whats essentially a $1495 non-certified EFIS thats perfect for experimentals but could do back-up duty in spam cans, too. That price doesnt include the PDA but youre shopping in that market, the IPAQ appears to be the top contender.
With air data and GPS inputs added, the Icarus version of this technology projects a combined display that rivals anything found on a Boeing flight deck and the entire get-up can simply be Velcrod into the airplane and operated on battery power. we’ll be looking at this system in detail in a future issue. Meanwhile, contact Icarus at 301-891-0600 www.icarusinstruments.com.
And speaking of PDAs, Control Vision announced weather capabality for its Anywhere PDA-based navigator, an intriguing option. Contact 620-231-6647/www.controlvision.com. Look for a review in a future issue.
Weather to Go
For a half decade now, weve been hearing about data uplink that will deliver text and graphic weather services to the cockpit. Finally, these services are now near ready for market. Both Bendix/King and AirCell-in conjunction with UPSAT/Apollo-demonstrated weather datalink systems at OSH.
At a glance, we estimate that Bendix/King has the most mature system but it too isn’t quite a done deal, since it relies on a network of ground stations yet to be installed. Bendix/Kings service will deliver text, weather alerts and NEXRAD radar for flat monthly fees ranging from $49.95 to $99.95, depending on the level of service. Text-only weather is delivered free of charge, as per FAA contract requirements.
Well, not entirely free. you’ll have to buy the hardware, which consists of a KDR 510 remote data receiver and a card inserted into whatever cockpit color MFD you wish to use. Price isn’t firmed up yet, but Bendix/King says the headware will be under $5000.
The system uses a network of dedicated ground stations which is just now being built out. At press time, only a slice of the Ohio valley has coverage but most of the eastern U.S. is scheduled for coverage above 8000 feet by years end.
What we like about this system is that it used something called VDL Mode 2 to continually upload fresh weather which resides in the onboard box, ready for instant retrieval by the pilot. Display is thus close to instantaneous, a nice feature to have when you need radar data in a hurry.
The competing system announced at OSH by both UPSAT/Apollo and AirCell, uses AirCells airborne cellphone technology to mimic a dial-up internet connection for weather access. It too will deliver text or graphical products, but will be billed on cellphone-type pricing plans, typically in the $20 per month range, plus $2 per minute. (The data rate allows downloading a map in about a minute or so, says AirCell.)