I see that some of you are flying with Aspen EFDs, so I’m looking for advice/pireps:
The gyro of my King HSI has gone t/u. It’s probably repairable, but that might be throwing good money after bad. Should I tear it out and fit an Aspen EFD1000?
My old eyes like the big clear display of the KI525A: is the Aspen as easy to read?
How much fun is reading and learning the Aspen operator’s manual?
TIA, Peter.
The Aspen is the best value for money there is in all avionics. It is feature packed and extremely well done.
The basic functionality from the King is easy to read, about the same size. All the other stuff is rather small.
Depends on how much you want to throw at it, @Jacko.
The KG102A can be overhauled by the top US firm, Castleberry Instrument in Texas, for about $1000. In fact I recall I got an exchange OH unit for about $1500, which means no downtime. The swap is minutes… 2 screws and done, no adjustments, no calibration.
A lot of people go for the the Aspen EFD1000 to replace the KCS55 slaved compass system but it’s a lot of money and a lot of work and there are very few good installers in the UK. There are also some gotchas; I don’t recall the details but there is something concerning a stormscope which needs some signal which the EFD1000 cannot generate so those people had to retain the KG102A even if they put in the Aspen. The devil is in the detail, as always.
Your local Aspen avionics shop should have demo stand. You might be able to give it a try, as it is the real thing, and you could play with it for some time.
You could also find the EFD-1000 PFD Pilot’s guide here: EFD1000 PFD Pilot Guide
You should also find out if your aircraft is listed on their AML STC, else it would be very expensive to get it installed, in that case repair, Sandel HSI or G500 might be more suiteable.
Aspen EFD1000 is a great device.
I did find a picture on the WWW with both KI525 and EFD1000 in the same panel.
So you can see what is the best readable
My opinion the KI525 is mutch better readable.
But the EFD1000 is so mutch more than just an HSI, ATT-ind
Peter wrote:
There are also some gotchas; I don’t recall the details but there is something concerning a stormscope which needs some signal which the EFD1000 cannot generate so those people had to retain the KG102A even if they put in the Aspen. The devil is in the detail, as always.
I think this is a thing of the past. L3 systems use digital heading inputs, the Insight system uses stepper drive when connected to KI-525. The Aspen doesn’t do stepper output, but does the ARINC 407 (synchro) and the Insight strike finder can be rewired to do ARINC 407 as well. This feature does require the ACU2 unit from Aspen as additional equipment.
There are so many cheap KI-525’s on the marked (since everybody is upgrading), that you can have 2 on the shelf when the installed one goes TU.
If the OPS is EASA reg, it does need a Tag, and that makes it somewhat more complicated.
For the N-reg’s, its a no brainer. An OH is 2500$+, and when you can get a full system for about 800-1200$ on ebay or on the different forums, that doesn’t make any sense.
Problem with upgrading to the ASPEN/GARMIN screens is that when the warranty expires(2 years), you use a small fortune each year for extended warranty/insurance.
Problem is that these Glass options are really sexy. And most pilots like sexy…..
Many thanks to all for above advice.
I do find the KI525 easier to read, so I’ll keep the old system going with a s/h gyro. The money saved will fill the bowser a couple of times…
PJ
Just for anyone else interested in the Aspen, here’s a photo of the EFD1000 in my Tiger. I would not worry about comparison with mechanical HSI units – you can see the quality of resolution. I particularly like the arc mode which is much better than the execution of arc in G1000 etc.
The biggest thing when moving from a classic HSI to any EFIS Nav display is the amount of clutter it adds, the current heading and the CDI needle are as readable as the mechanical devices, IMO, but there are a good two dozen additional bits in the same space, some useful, some less so.
Look at the example above – you have the softbutton menu on the side and the bottom (not great on that narrow display, but necessary), a flight plan display (very good feature, but also adds the CDI replacement at the bottom), the current waypoint with DTK,DIST, and EET (nice to have, depending on taste), a digital readout of current course set, heading selected, and heading flown (nice to have for precision), a current track over ground pointer, a FPM readout (in the wrong place,IMO)
Once you get used to it, it is great. If you go to normal HSI mode an lose the map, the representation is a bit simpler.
