Todd
I recently had a 55x and replaced it with the Garmin g3x. I found it to be an excellent en route autopilot but there were some issues that frustrated me terribly that forced my decision to move to a modern digital system. I found at certain frequencies the pitch servo would be disturbed when keying my mic. Others on lml have experienced this also. I shielded the hell out of the servo and made sure my power and signal grounds on the aircraft were perfect but I still could not keep rf out of the damn thing. In addition, I could not get sufficient roll rate for intercepting an ils for instance.
I am an electronics engineer by training and am pretty handy with a soldering iron. S-TEC were reasonably helpful in directing me to the right components to change out on the computer boards to better match the system to the lnc2 flight dynamics but I was never fully satisfied with the results. Pitch control was good but as pointed out earlier, roll left something to be desired.
I have also owned a certified aircraft (Tobago) with the s-TEC 30 and found it to be very reliable with no gain/control issues. Be sure to order the GPSS module
Thanks
Tom
Sent from my iPad
Todd,
I'm far from an expert, but I had in my LNC2 360 (chronological order):
-wing leveler (I forget the brand)
-50X (not a typo- interesting story- only a few of these made it out into the field)
-55X
-TT Digiflight 2
The Trutrak was the standout performer in pitch (and roll). Not even close. I never had the S-Tec 30, but likely you would be disappointed in the amount of improvement in pitch.
Regards,
Clark