Will there ever be a day when steam gauge avionics have to be ripped out?

What’s worse – some of the integrated panel planes have no way of future proofing. Case in hand – the very capable and rather newly certified Beech Premier 1 has no upgrade path today to ADS-B deadline in FAA land of 2020. Apparently they are working on it, but if none can be found in time, the plane turns into a pumpkin on 2020. Also, because it’s integrated, any fix will most likely cost a fortune for the owners. The later Premier 1A has an upgrade patch today, but it isn’t cheap.

Expect to see a lot more of these shenanigans in the future. All glass, all integrated panels that are part of the type certificate is a bad idea for owners down the line.

I had a chance to fly 2008 Cirrus SR22TN few weeks ago alongside a Miami Beach (my first and very dissapointing flight in Cirrus airplane not only because of failed MFD). The Avidyne Entegra MFD went dark during this short, one hour flight. The culprit was in cooked backlight inverter (Applied Concepts, 350$, otherwise 25$ item in standard notebooks). The internals of Entegra are the same as any industrial PC for 1000$. As soon as they change the pricing accordingly, I will start thinking about glass. For now I think it is overpriced and unreliable.

Pytlak wrote:

As soon as they change the pricing accordingly, I will start thinking about glass. For now I think it is overpriced and unreliable.

That will never happen because of certification and administration costs.

Unreliable? Because at the one time you flew a glass cockpit A/C, the MFD backlighting failed?

BTW: Anyone interested in an electrical R.C. Allen DG from 1998? I removed it from my Experimental recently in favour of a Dynon

My hangar is 50m from a Cirrus Authorized Service Center. They do maintain around 16 Cirrus Airplanes and my experience in failing TVs comes from their reports not only my one flight in SR22TN. My flight just confirmed the reports. (BTW. the failure we experienced in a friends SR22TN was not the first one :-)).

Pytlak wrote:

My hangar is 50m from a Cirrus Authorized Service Center. They do maintain around 16 Cirrus Airplanes and my experience in failing TVs comes from their reports not only my one flight in SR22TN. My flight just confirmed the reports. (BTW. the failure we experienced in a friends SR22TN was not the first one :-)).

There are other aircraft with glass than Cirrus and other glass systems than Avidyne Entegra…

Of the 16 Cirrus aircraft being maintained in the shop I mentioned earlier is roughly half of them Avidyne and other half Garmin 1000 i.e. Cirrus Perspective as they call it. Garmin is younger and tends to be more reliable than Avidyne. Generally it seems that the TVs do not age very nicely and are getting old pretty quickly. I think that the manufacturers should give you a new hardware each five years for the price of hardware, i.e. up to $1000 or so. It would be much more reliable than.

tomjnx wrote:

Oh come on, that’s just a play on words, if the regulators’ fees are such that any upgrade is economically infeasible, then that is preventing updates in practice.

EASA fee for a major change on an aircraft <2000kg is 290€ – 1290€ depending on complexity. I think it’s rather sensible and you should not confuse EASA fees and involved engineering work.

tomjnx wrote:

Why should an Aspen behave differently in a (metal) Robin compared to a (metal) Piper or Cessna? It doesn’t make any sense.

Or take autopilots.

On the Aspen I agree, on the autopilots less so. Any autopilot depends on the flight dynamics of the aircraft and it should be fitted to that specific airframe. Of course this is done very quick to a simple wing leveler, but if you ask for flight guidance and envelope protection, the airframe should be fitted closer to the airframe to achieve good results.

europaxs wrote:

Anyone interested in an electrical R.C. Allen DG from 1998? I removed it from my Experimental recently in favour of a Dynon

Maybe, I’ll get back to you next week. What are you asking?

@AdamFrisch Doesn’t the Premier I have Pro Line 21 (just as the IA or King Airs)? I don’t see how that has anything to do with it being glass or integrated. RC has the required hardware and there are other solutions available. Someone just has to do an STC which is true for standalone boxes as well (I think there is at least one available that uses a solution from Universal). I don’t know whether RC has an STC for Premier I, there should be one for King Airs. It’s true that traditional systems like Pro Line are very expensive (G5000, for example, is AFAIK much cheaper). Prices of used jets might be low, but prices of retrofits aren’t.