<<I am considering the Op Technologies EFIS for my panel. They seem to have all the requisite bells and whistles, along with a better visual presentation that the Blue Mountain EFIS/One.

 Does anyone out there have any experience with Op Technologies? I would like to hear from the group about reliability, usability, factory support, etc.>>



I have just bought two of the small screens and assorted support paraphernalia for my Legacy.  We are going to pull my panel and start in on the install this weekend.  So far, my experience consists of flying in OP's demo Cirus, hooking one of the boxes I just bought up to a 12-V battery and running the demo program and reading the Owner's and Installation manuals.

Since I bought it, I obviously considered it to be my first choice.  I mostly compared it to the Chelton Sport system, which I also liked.  Both the OP and the Chelton systems use the Crossbow 420 AHRS and have very similar features.  I ended up with the OP system for two principal reasons.  First, I like the display better (and particularly like the fact that you can split the screen on a single display to present both EFIS and other data (map or engine.)  The OP also has a killer approach screen that displays the approach in both vertical and horizontal modes with a little red a/c bug flying along the line.  Second, OP is located five miles from my hangar and are considering moving to a space about 200 yds. from it. (I am going to really like this -- not sure about them.)  I did not compare it with the Blue Mountain system, which I don't know much about.  

The flight confused me completely, as was to be expected with so complex a piece of gear.  After fooling with it and reading the manual, I think it is certainly manageable and most of the trouble will be trying to adjust from Garmin conventions to OP conventions (some of which I think are better and some worse than Garmin.)  With any system, you need to learn how to use it and that is going to be a big task.

One of the most difficult things to sort out is the difference between OP's "integrated" and "non-integrated" systems.  Basically, you can drive the displays with remote mounted gear that includes not only the normal EFIS stuff but your entire radio stack.  You can also use a conventional radio stack to drive the OP system.  You can use the OP system to input into some stack devices but not others.  Eg. original Garmin products are closed archetecture so they will output but will not permit input of data.  Former Apollo products permit two way communication and therefore allow the OP to drive the stack gear.  Tru-Trak will not take OP inputs but I understand OP and S-Tek are working on something.

I opted for the non-integrated system, in part because I wanted a fully-independent backup.  It has been something of a chore to determine exactly how each piece of gear works with this OP system but I think I am there now.  The marketing materials and manuals are not helpful in this regard (they had to leave something out) so there is no alternative but to talk to the OP engineers.

I am using a Dynon for backup EFIS and am not installing any backup round guages except for an OBS indicator that will run of by Garmin 430.

I also tried but failed to talk to Rick.  I did talk to two other pilots with installed OP systems:  Bottom line in both cases was that the system was big-time iffy when they first installed it over a year ago but they were able to work closely with OP and the system now works flawlessly.

OP is a bit behind Chelton on some software items but are working on all of them.  Eg. the Chelton feature of projecting track, rather than heading, on the EFIS is not there yet but they are working on it.  SIDs are in the system but not STARs.  GPSS VNAV is a work in progress (but in any case requires a WAAS enabled GPS and GPSS VNAV autopilot, both of which are current rarities.)  My sense is that all this is coming in the next year or so.  OP is seeking certification of what they refer to as a dumbed down version of the experimental system and STARs are going to be required for that.

OP are a bunch of ex-Honeywell engineers who are currently earning a living doing contract work, mainly, I think, for Boeing.  OP is small but profitable based on the contract work.  From this lawyer's perspective, they seem to know what they are talking about and what they say will happen generally has.

Call or email me in a month and I can tell you whether this is a boom or a bust.