Navaid replacement

My Navaid is acting up. Will not hold a course. Time to replace the gyro.

I have read about the Trio and the Digitrack for use with the Navaid Servo. Looking for opinions. Do I spend the extra $200 for the Trio or should I save a few bucks and go with the Digitrack. I have lots of bells and do not need any more. Sounds like the Trio has the most features. Would like to have the replacement in before Oshkosh but could also buy it at OSH.

Gary
N157GS, 1,867.9 hours flying since Sept 1997

Either One!

Gary,

There was another thread a week or so ago on Tru-trak vs. Trio - you might look that one up, but in all honesty, most folks have flown one or the other, and not both, so all you get is one side of each story. Fair enough - from what I can tell (from both sides), they both work great! I have the Pictorial Pilot for tru-Trak, and I like that it gives me the equivalent of a turn coordinator along with the autopilot. It holds heading, and tracks the Nav, does nice turns - what more could I want?

I think I'd go with whichever one works best with your existing servo - that's the one thing I sure wouldn't want to have to change on mine! Panel work is easier than pulling the floor....

Paul

Hi Gary.

I think either the TruTrak or Trio would be a good replacement, and that's probably what I would do myself but there may be one other option:

I have had two friends with elderly navaids that quite working, and they were able to take them apart and fix them. Apparently the mechanism is fairly simple, and has some parts that wear (relatively) quickly. With the hours you have on your airframe, I suspect the Navaid has already given you many hours of service--maybe you could coax a few more out of it if you take it apart to see how it works.

James Freeman

You could also probably pick up a slightly used Navaid head for a few hundred bucks. Lots of folks have pulled them in favor of something newer, but kept the servo. I'll be doing the same, someday (like after the paint job.)

RV6_flyer said:

My Navaid is acting up. Will not hold a course. Time to replace the gyro.

I have read about the Trio and the Digitrack for use with the Navaid Servo. Looking for opinions. Do I spend the extra $200 for the Trio or should I save a few bucks and go with the Digitrack. I have lots of bells and do not need any more. Sounds like the Trio has the most features. Would like to have the replacement in before Oshkosh but could also buy it at OSH.

Gary
N157GS, 1,867.9 hours flying since Sept 1997

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I got my Trio whilst I was on the road half way across the country and litterally had the head installed in 5 minutes. Direct plug and play to my Navaid servo and existing wire harness. You will have to pry it from my dead body! I think when you compare the feature set you will find the $200 trivial. And when you start using it, you will wonder why they dont charge you double Especially after fondling the very unprecise Navaid unit.

Enjoy your choices
Best,

I called and ordered the Trio today. It will be here before the weekend and I should install it on Saturday.

What about S-TEC servos?

Can you also swap out an S-TEC control head for a Tru-Track or Trio and use the existing servos (both pitch and roll)?

My S-TEC does what it was designed to do, but it will not intercept courses on its own. You must manually intercept a desired course (either by hand or with the heading bug), before selecting TRK to track the course. The same is true for station passage. You must manually intercept the new outbound course, then turn it on TRK.

It's OK for now, but if I get around to tearing into the panel to install the GRT EFIS I've been drooling over I could swap autopilots at the same time. It would greatly simplify things if I could use the existing servos.

Mike

RV6_flyer said:

I called and ordered the Trio today. It will be here before the weekend and I should install it on Saturday.

Click to expand...

Cool!!! Looking forward to flying straight lines off your wing again...

I called and ordered the Trio today. It will be here before the weekend and I should install it on Saturday.

Click to expand...

Gary, you will like your new EZ-Pilot! Someone like you who has a lot of time with the Navaid can really appreciate the advances in features and capabilities that digital sensors have brought to our panels. The first time you push the little red button and watch your plane turn smoothly toward the waypoint (even if it is behind you!) and smoothly capture the track is a real revelation. Even though you don't need more bells and whistles, having the GPS data displayed on the EZ-Pilot will spoil you.

Enjoy!

By the way, I'm now flying Trio's EZ-2 vertical autopilot and it is a very capable system. My hangar-mate and I flew our planes to lunch this afternoon and even though the air was really bumpy, the EZ-2 precisely held altitude and accurately captured the rate of climb and descent I programmed into the system during the flight. This is a great addition for anyone already flying the EZ-Pilot and like the EZ-Pilot has a full set of innovative features.

Trio installed

The Trio replacement arrived two days after I ordered it. I finished installing it today. Made one adjustment on the ground to center the ailerons and off on the first test flight. It worked! I was able to track to a waypoint and also track a course. There is a little hunting but no more than the Navaid had. I need to read the manual to find out all the things that this unit will do. It does display the bearing to waypoint, ground track, and ground speed in much larger numbers than the GX-60. I did not think I needed this function but it is easier to read and I do not need my bi-focals to see it.

Installation would have been 5 minutes like Mike reports but when I wired the GX-60 / SL-30 years ago, I wired the AP into serial port 2 with the SL30 to seral port 1. I can only program ONE port for MAP so I would only have one or the other working with GPS data. I had to rewire the serial ports so that both the Trio AP and SL-30 were on the same port. This took several hours but all I can say is that it was worth it.

Thanks guys for getting me off my duff and doing this upgrade.