The Diamond turboprop (windows were blacked out)
A Czech turboprop engine
Stepper motor based servos for the homebuilt market. The man on the stand didn’t know anything about the product but it looks like you get an autopilot for a few k.
A lot of Rotax based planes which looked like this
Surprisingly small starter motors, some with an integrated starter relay. They looked like they would do an IO540 but nobody knew anything about them
The first two starters are the “new” Hartzell X-Drive starters, the last one is the Hartzell E-Drive starter.
And the presse-papier servo looks like a Dynon one.
During the Aero I experienced a lot of sale representatives that had NO CLUE what so ever of the things that they had displayed. This was mostly for European shops and producers. Totally different experience from the US based companies.
I find this really strange when you take the time and costs to be at an exhibition to try to gain customers, but cannot even answers the simplest questions.
Big turn off for me.
I very much agree.
I think the difference is that the big European companies use more or less dedicated “exhibition teams” (who are mostly people who treat life like one big party away from home) or in the smaller cases use sales staff borrowed out of their office.
Whereas the US firms I noticed tended to have some high level people there. In some cases they were obviously the owners of the business. I didn’t see Mountain High there this year but previously it was the owner who was standing there the whole time.
The most hilarious example was Pilatus who said to a prospective customer (not me) that he could see the inside of the PC12, but only from the outside. A $4M sale, easily lost.
The most hilarious example was Pilatus who said to a prospective customer (not me) that he could see the inside, but only from the outside. A $4M sale, easily lost.
That was because the guy didn’t wear a Brioni suit, had no artifical sun tan and his girlfriend was not 25 years younger. He kind of looked like this guy, clearly not somebody who could afford a Pilatus.
Hmm, Kanardia. That servo looks an awful lot like an MGL servo.
http://www.mglavionics.co.za/servo.html
I hope I win in Lottery some day, then that Diamond is mine 
I have brought back a brochure from Kanardia, in Slovenia, describing their system. It looks nice but the displays are obviously photoshopped, so this looks like one of many avionics products for the homebuilt market which appear at Aero every year, perhaps to see if there is enough interest.
An autopilot is a major undertaking so I am not surprised they plan to buy it in. But you need to flight test it all around the loading envelope and at Vs-Vne at the same time, for every aircraft type, to ensure stability. They claim auto-tune of autopilot parameters, which is possible.
Anybody can do a mockup of a glass panel for the homebuilt market. You get a box, a display, some processor board, an off the shelf AHRS module, and write a load of software to generate nice graphics. It probably takes a good programmer a few months. But autopilots need a lot more work, also in the installation documentation where the metalwork has to be developed, and the flight testing.
There are several autopilots available for the homebuilder, including Dynon and Garmin, all cost about £3000.
