I did some aerobatics once, and was interested to see that the glass panel AI was way out all the while until shutdown. Not sure what it was, or when exactly the problem started.
That's totally outrageous. What if you yaw and accelerate the PC12 during flight?
I don't think that is a problem, it looks like a problem with the logic that switches between alignment and normal operation
Do you have a reference for this? I find it very surprising and hard to believe.
"Private communications" as they say in research papers... sorry nothing more citable
The Honeywell installation in the PC12 apparently tumbles when you do a rolling takeoff, so rolling takeoffs had to be forbidden.
Do you have a reference for this? I find it very surprising and hard to believe.
2500hrs for an SR22 6000hrs for a Beech
My guess is that they came to this figures by taking the total number of labor hours for a year, and divide it by the number of aircraft produced.
I work in the financial industry, where things move very slow and with a lot of inefficiencies. I think in the aviation industry it's even worse. The actual process of producing a SR22 will be much less than 2500hrs, but with all the fuzz around it (development, marketing, certification, writing documentation, etc) I can imagine it will cost 2500hrs of labor per unit.
One advantage of steam gauges would be the fact that everything is separate. You don't lose airspeed indication just because the gyro goes nuts, but on the other hand that's what all the backup systems are for...
In this particular case where the question is Steam or Electronic one could ask how the aircraft will be used. If VFR only I wouldn't be worried about a dead panel, so go for the cheapest/simplest application. You already have the best attitude gyro on the planet, i.e. the planet.
For IFR I would want redundancy anyway so that would require some combination of gear. Probably panels and steam gauges. If you're really rich I suppose you could install triple independent electronic systems like the big jets and be safe anyway.
The president of LAMA claimed maintaining a POA (Production Organisation Approval) would cost at least 100k EUR / y.
Yes but €100k is only the cost of one university-educated person, a desk, and normal office overheads 
The G1000 manual claims the gyro will only start up if the device has either GPS or airspeed. I can see no good reason for this.
Can you see a scenario where one would want to start up the plane and not have airspeed data? I think you may mean "airdata" i.e. airspeed, altitude, heading. But even those should be available when on the ground, more or less immediately. Unless something has packed up, of course...
The Honeywell installation in the PC12 apparently tumbles when you do a rolling takeoff, so rolling takeoffs had to be forbidden.
That's totally outrageous. What if you yaw and accelerate the PC12 during flight? Mind you, after this, Honeywell are capable of most things.
I think a lot of the money disappears on fancy projects like single engine VLJs...
A lot of money also seems to disappear toward cologne. The president of LAMA claimed maintaining a POA (Production Organisation Approval) would cost at least 100k EUR / y.
What is the basis of your argument that electronic panels are not more reliable than the mechanical gyros?
Electronic MEMS Gyros have a rather large and time varying bias. So you need to constantly track and correct for the sensor bias. In order to do this, you need to more tightly couple the gyro to the accelerometer, much tighter than the guide vanes or torque motors of a mechanical gyro. That means the electronic gyro will more quickly wander off in accelerated flight.
Then there are what seems to be implementation or algorithmic bugs. The G1000 manual claims the gyro will only start up if the device has either GPS or airspeed. I can see no good reason for this.
The Honeywell installation in the PC12 apparently tumbles when you do a rolling takeoff, so rolling takeoffs had to be forbidden.
What is the basis of your argument that electronic panels are not more reliable than the mechanical gyros?
Mech gyros versus AHRS gyros, possibly, in some cases. But some AHRS products have turned out to be not very reliable. And the gyros are a very small % of the avionics fit.
aren't you ignoring development costs?
Perhaps but ask how long has the aircraft in question been for sale, in essentially the present condition?
I think a lot of the money disappears on fancy projects like single engine VLJs...
