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as an extreme introvert, its enlightening how enjoyable social
interaction is on a fact finding mission to the aopa convention.. (another way of saying that traveling with friends makes a trip more
enjoyable) anyway, with an emphases on in cockpit weather and PFDs the
interesting things at http://www.aopa.org/expo/ were: http://www.garmin.com/ has a new mode s transponder $3k more than their
old transponder that now includes alt hold. The cool thing about this is one can receive traffic information (like TCAD) via mode s in the terminal radar environment!! makes you wanta buy a 530 to display this information.
http://www.avidyne.com/_aopaexpo/ had a stunning 10" 800x600 MFD. but
for me all the MFDs have large diminishing returns over a g195.. I want
a glass PFD with solid state gyros!!! there were:
http://www.optechnologies.com/products.html ~$30k one tube system
http://www.meggittavi.com/magic.html $55k two tube system
http://sierraflightsystems.com/efis2000menu.html better $60k two tubes.
ARNAV's 8km NEXRAD product using ~40 ground based 9.6kb VHF FM
transmitters is dead... King is working on a similar ground based 56kb
VHF PCM VDL mode 2 systems but is slow installing transmitters.
http://www.echoflight.com/ continues to improve their MFD options.
adding terrain last year and landsat photos this year.. The weather via
the Orbcom SVC system (4.8kb VHF FM world wide downlink) with a 7km
NEXRAD product hasn't changed much..
http://www.aircell.com/products/pr_1000.htm has gotten much
better http://www.aircell.com/coverage/default.htm and works with an
MX20 and has two plans: $10/month or $30/month. DUAS graphics..
all above are user request <--> send weather systems. the big surprise was http://www.wxstream.com and http://www.satellinktech.com/ (think they are the same, but one was
inside and the other was outside at aopa) they were displaying LIVE data
from a geo SVC that's broadcasts on a 5min loop. most of that loop is taken up with a continental US *1km* 3 color NEXRAD product. then a VFR, IFR, LIFR, CAT1 dot for metar stations and then text metar/taf at
56kb. The cool thing about this, aside from the wonderful 1km image is
the fact that its always broadcasting, so the MFD needs only to wait 15mins (well, we should suspect the nextrad data they get changes 7min or if you miss a part of the 5min loop) then it can crop those three images and display the NEXRAD loop right where you are, or where you are going, no waiting!! its a rs232 interface, but the
number of MFD vendors that currently support this blind box is currently
small. The antenna can be a small transponder like blade or gps like pad.
Call your MFD vendor (SFS in my case) and have them support this new
system!!! I have no $$ stake in this vendor, but would if I could :-)
its that good... lame photos of the flight
http://rob.com/lancair/2001.aopa/
Rob
--
Seldom are there technical solutions to people problems.
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