Glass
Menagerie
Treating your airplane to a new reality in avionics
BY MARK PHELPS
IF YOUR INNER SANTA has been a bit stingy over the past few years
when it comes to upgrades for your airplane, now might be a good
time to un-Scrooge your budget. Retrofit avionics technology has
taken giant leaps forward in capability and performance, with pric-
ing that often runs surprisingly close to what it would cost to repair
or replace your mechanical “steam gauges.”
The latest advanced features from Aspen Avionics, for example,
include synthetic vision and a clever interface that allows you to
command your panel avionics from your iPad. They join the already
impressive list of features, including electronic charts and taxi dia-
grams with geo-referenced “ship’s position” illustrated. And Aspen
prides itself on “future-proofing” its Evolution line of avionics—
assuring customers that the investment they make today will not
become the white elephant in the panel a few years from now.
When glass avionics suites came to the light aircraft fleet about
two decades ago, the first examples were simply screen depictions of
the existing mechanical round gauges. When the jet-like screens
appeared—with airspeed and altitude “tapes” and screen-wide
horizon lines—the price of admission for certified aircraft owners
was steep. You had to buy a brand-new airplane. The move to
develop retrofit versions of these avionics packages was slow for a
lot of reasons. But the market was eager, and sooner or later, it had
to happen.
The homebuilt community had plenty to do with this. Companies
such as Blue Mountain Avionics and Dynon developed a cottage
industry of glass-panel technology for the experimental market—but
the goodies were mostly off limits for owners of certified aircraft. I
say “mostly” because I’m told some owners of certified aircraft did
successfully negotiate the paperwork to certify installation of some
of these non-certified systems in their aircraft under supplemental
type certificates (STCs). But for the most part, non-TSO’d (technical
standard order) avionics are geared to the experimental market
exclusively, and the success of these companies is testimony to how
robust that constituency is.
New this year for Aspen, synthetic vision is a quantum leap
in situational awareness—and available as a simple
software upgrade.
Aspen was first to the general aviation
mass market (though you could argue that
“GA mass market” is an oxymoron) with
affordable retrofit glass. The concept
sounded almost too good to be true—a certified electronic flight instrument system
(EFIS) that simply plugged the holes left in
the panel when you amputated the old
mechanical gyro horizon and gyro compass.
And the cost of the EFD1000 was comparable to what you’d pay to rebuild the old
instruments. What’s not to like?
While it’s true that the installation process for the Evolution equipment is
simplified by its fit-in-the-old-instrument-holes format, there are some challenges for
installers. For example, Phil Baier, avionics
manager at Jet East in Trenton, New Jersey,
explains that it can be tough to locate a spot
for the required remote sensor module,
which neatly contains the system’s magnetometer, outside air temp gauge, and backup
GPS antenna. He said, “It needs to be at least
