Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jay Maynard on February 26, 2009 at 9:55am

Mine is the Garmin GPS 496, hands down. The GNS 430W is great, the TruTrak Digiflight IIVSG works fine, the Lightspeed Zulus are wonderful (and Lightspeed customer service is fantastic), but none of them hold a candle to the 496 for all-around general usefulness, both in and out of the airplane. In flight, it makes long cross-country flights much more feasible because you can watch the weather in real time and make decisions based on how things really are, not on how some forecaster thought they'd be several hours ago. It's a fully capable automotive navigator, too, and when I take it on business trips, it gives me both navigation and XM radio in the rent car. Updates are cheap, and the thing Just Works. I wouldn't give it up.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Webb on February 26, 2009 at 4:01pm

Oil Pressure Gauge is my favorite but I do operate a 496 in the Army airplane I fly. It works great! It's about to be obsolete however (for our use) since we're getting the Jeppesen flight bag with built in live nexrad right on the yolk!

Anyone flying cross country should not be without a 496, 495 or some other good handheld. I heard a guy flying a 172 Cessna last month asking the controller (in the busy Atlanta area) for a vector to the airport! Even a Garmin Nuvi can find the airport for you!!

Good discussion item.

Be Safe! Be Smart!

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Permalink Reply by Stephen R. Smith on February 27, 2009 at 12:04am

The widget I would miss the most should it suddenly quit working would be My Dynon D180. Luckily it has been very dependable - no problems so far. I think a very under appreciated feature is its angle-of-attack alarm. I have mine calibrated so it gives me very early warnings - long before any real danger and I like it that way - no stalls for me thank you vary much.

I also have a Garmin 495 which I have wired into my headset for the terrain and obstacle warnings. I will say the terrain warnings can get a bit tedious. I like the airspace information and I depend on it a lot. I would sure miss it if it quit working.

Both of the above are very high quality and very aircraft worthy.

Another widget I depend on is my tablet computer mounted on the panel running Windows XP. It has all my charts - no paper in my plane. I will not claim it is what you would call aircraft worthy however because it can be cranky at times. It does provide many features beside my charts. It is my backup screen for my Dynon. It provides me with live weather information and fuel price information. It has an internet connection even while flying. It is my "black box" flight recorder because it records both my Dynon and GPS data streams in real time. It is my flight-following system as well - my family knows where my plane is 95% of the time when I am out flying.

Steve

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Permalink Reply by Bobby Paulk on March 12, 2009 at 6:09pm

Steve
i would like to know what kind of program and connection you are using to record the Dynon info.
i would like to record EGT and CHT's at different power settings then be able to view it back on the ground.

thanks

bobby
N131BP 601 XL
82 HRS.

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Permalink Reply by David Gallagher on March 12, 2009 at 7:34pm

Bobby,

I have a Dynon D-180 and record the data for later review on my laptop computer. Of course, that is one of the Dynon's drawbacks, for some people, that you have to have a computer at the unit to plug into. The dynon harness has a serial port that plugs into the computer. The Dynon support program extracts the data out in a format that easily opens up in a speadsheet program like MS Excel. You can plot all sorts of parameters then.

Dave

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Permalink Reply by Stephen R. Smith on March 12, 2009 at 9:03pm

Hello Bobby,

I use a program I wrote in VB6 to capture the data in real-time. I have a 4 port serial-to-USB converter which is connected to my tablet PC. The Dynon outputs real-time EFIS data on one serial port and EMS data on another. I capture GPS data on a third port and collate the data as I write it to the hard drive. I understand the Dynon can also log the data for download after the flight. That feature was added in a firmware update sometime in the past 18 months or so. There is a website called I Fly EZ. The website has a nifty program you can download for free that works with the Dynon and the GPS. I have not tried his software but it looks well done. It sure looks nicer than my program.

Steve

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