Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Anybody has the Insight G4 engine monitor?

Here

I’ve just been looking at it. It looks pretty amazing, and should fit in place of my 3.125" EDM700.

They have the sticky valve spectrum feature.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Very favorable comments in the US Cessna forums, regarded as playing in the same league as the EDMs. I chose the EDM 830 because you can install it in an EASA airplane (it is a variant of the EDM 700 although it has nothing in common with it). The EDM 830 and the Insight G4 provide a lot more information than the EDM 700 and are great tools to have.

You guys should check out the EI CGR-30P as well. It’s a newer unit, more capable and also cheaper. Pretty much displaces every single primary engine instrument. Full FAA TSO’s and certified.

Last Edited by AdamFrisch at 08 Aug 16:05

I have just got some answers from Insight:

Oil temp (as 7th bar on EDM) not available at all.
3rd party sensors not supported (even if same thermocouple type).
Q on storage resolution not answered (EDM is 5F).
Data logging once sample per second (2GB card is plenty big enough).
Auto dimming from built-in light sensor.
6 cylinder version $3.5k.

The lack of an oil temp means it can’t replace an EDM700. Surprising they missed that! Every EDM700 has always had that. All you needed to do was to connect the oil temp sensor, and it would come up as the 7th bar.

Last Edited by Peter at 08 Aug 20:21
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Commander on this forum has a G4. I do think he reported as very good elsewhere on this forum.

Last Edited by Jesse at 09 Aug 08:50
JP-Avionics
EHMZ

I would like to get the CGR-30P….just trying to save up the £7-8,000 I have been quoted…

YPJT, United Arab Emirates

That looks nice but… if you are actually using it to replace both the tacho and the EGT/CHT instrument, then you have a single point of failure for two fairly important instruments.

One of the reasons I would not do it is that I like the ease of changing out individual instruments. This translates to a very high aircraft availability. I am constantly astonished to hear of such and such a pilot being grounded for weeks or months waiting for something. The concept of being grounded is totally alien to me. Hopefully the only thing which will actually ground me is a loss of my medical.

However, Socata’s tacho costs so much money (made by a Swiss company which no longer supports them) that if that packs up, it would probably pay to install a different instrument there.

But the only person who will install the combined tacho+EGT/CHT instrument would obviously be somebody who doesn’t already have the latter function, which is probably not too many IFR owner-pilots. You cannot share thermocouple sensors across two indicators. Well, you can but the wiring gets awfully messy (with the large numbers of crimped junctions in the TC cables) and the open probe detection could get “interesting” if one of the two indicating instruments gets its power supply removed. One would need to check that out carefully. Obviously nobody is going to drill two sets of EGT probe holes in their exhaust much as that would be desirable given the frequency of EGT probe failures.

Same comment goes for the fuel flow. If you already have a JPI or Shadin fuel flow totaliser then while it is possible to use the same transducer (Floscan 201 usually) driving two indicators, there is the issue with the pullup resistors going up to two rails which may be on two separate buses, and indeed arguably should be on two separate buses. One can do it with diodes, but few avionics installers are going to know that. Neither of UK’s two biggest 145+21 shops knows this.

One reason I would replace the EDM700 is to get decent logging. The EDM700 memory holds about 20hrs’ flying which is a hassle because it’s easy to forget to download it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

made by a Swiss company

I didn’t know Nürnberg lies in Switzerland – you learn something new every day

This is the company – and they still seem to have the basic indicator series on sale, maybe you can use a replacement type.

LSZK, Switzerland

Well found…

My previous searches found them here and they even listed the exact part but that has since been removed. That instrument uses a precision servo positioning for the pointer, with a stepping motor, and tests have shown that it is accurate to within the limit of readability of the scale.

I think that if one can find an STCd primary replacement tacho, and there are probably several now, it doesn’t matter much anymore. Admittedly not much is going to be STCd as a primary replacement for a TB20. I recall EI were doing one such product. Whatever you use has to be STCd as a primary replacement for that airframe and (if applicable) the serial number range.

Last Edited by Peter at 09 Aug 19:48
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I think that if one can find an STCd primary replacement tacho, and there are probably several now, it doesn’t matter much anymore. Admittedly not much is going to be STCd as a primary replacement for a TB20. I recall EI were doing one such product. Whatever you use has to be STCd as a primary replacement for that airframe and (if applicable) the serial number range.

I’ve been having ‘fun and games’, with mechanical tachometers for the past couple of years, and have used a couple of different ones. I’ve not heard any objection to using a TSO replacement tachometer, as long as it has the correct markings – my problem is finding one that doesn’t go out of calibration within 20 hrs!

Actually I don’t even need a tachometer because the electric propeller is run by a closed loop controller that I’ve checked with an optical tach and found accurate to within probably 10 rpm or better.

“Man with two watches doesn’t know time”

Last Edited by Silvaire at 09 Aug 21:07
25 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top