Why synthetic vision?

[Ironflight]

Originally Posted by breister

Synthetic vision is nice, but you get virtually the same information on a Garmin hand-held with terrain - just takes a little interpretation.

Not knocking SV in any way; if it had been mature when I made my purchase decisions I would have bought it - just pointing out that the data is there for you to interpret from a 396/496 which many people already have on board.

I think I'd have to disagree with you on this one. Having flown both for many, many hours, I can tell you that when you are dropping out of the sky at 1,000 fpm (typical engine-out descent in an RV), any time that you have to spend interpreting is lost time. There isn't any real interpretation with SV, but with 2D representations of terrain, you have to put a lot of brain-power in to the job.

Which is not to say that everyone should run out and buy an SV display guys - just that under certain circumstances (such as the incident cited in this thread), it could very well be the difference between a successful outcome or not. How often are you going to experience an engine out under IFR in the clouds? Heck, there are other ways to mitigate that risk - don't be there, for one....

Paul

[pierre smith]

....an RV-10 had an engine failure in IMC and the gentleman had SV and found a strip that the air traffic controllers didn't know about AND landed without a scratch to him or the airplane,

Best,

[N395V]

Synthetic vision is nice, but you get virtually the same information on a Garmin hand-held with terrain - just takes a little interpretation.

Not knocking SV in any way; if it had been mature when I made my purchase decisions I would have bought it - just pointing out that the data is there for you to interpret from a 396/496 which many people already have on board.

Thats kinda the way I look at SV. I have had it in my planes for a long time and never use it.

Having said that one cannot argue with it's utility in the above engine out scenario, I think in that case it was clearly a life saver and an excellent option to have available whether you like it or use it or not.

It gave a happy ending to what could otherwise been another very sad statistic.

[Flybuddy2]

Dynon released version 2.5 for their Skyview this past week which added several things including obstacle synvis and runway synvis and so far I've flown with it twice. I've got a load of hours flying 396/496 and there is no comparison in situational awareness. You look out the window with synvis and back and forth at the screen and it's just amazing how they match. In an emergency you may not have enough active brain cells left for interpolation.

[turbo]

would take an exceptional pilot to pull that one off. kudos to him. i hope we all have what is needed to fly it till it stops. if you are not ifr rated your chances are very low.

[apkp777]

A while back someone had posted a you tube video of a guy flying a Bonaza in IMC and had a CFIT and was able to continue flying and land. It was quite a controversial video and there was talk about SV back then. The circumstances were basically the pilot and his endangered passengers (one with a camera in hand) were scud running and hit a mountain.

If I remember correctly, the video showed a 496 but no SV. I am pretty sure SV would have helped to prevent the near disaster.

I have SkyView, and though the tallest mountain in WI is about 1500 feet or so, I really like the features. Flying today, I was checking out my CFI in my plane and he thought it was awesome. The new version 2.5 SkyView is really great. You have runways, terrain and obstacles. Also, a great feature, which I haven't used much is the pointer that is on screen that shows your actual path of travel through space. This will correct for wind drift and pitch and roll. You can put the pointer where you want it and avoid all the stuff that'll ruin your day. You can also point it toward the runway image and you don't have to worry about WCA's on an ILS.

[dynonsupport]

Terrain resolution helps with situational awareness as well. Here's a 696 in the grand canyon and SkyView at the same place on the map page. Now imagine the 696 as a 396, which has only about 40% the screen size.

[CarlosF@grtavionics]

I spoke with pilot at Oshkosh that lost his engine on top over Oregon. He will be releasing the entire audio soon. Until then here is a sound bite.


Audio



File Photo


Carlos Fernandez
GRT Avionics

[TThurston]

Last night this pilot made a presentation on his experience at our local airport safety meeting. He's based there. It was an amazing presentation. I'd met him a couple of times before. In fact, I'd met his wife and a couple of his kids before, and seen his plane. He used to fly an RV-6, but now flies a Lancair Legacy.

Regarding the synthetic vistion debate - he has a Garmin 530 in the panel. But I got the impression that he didn't feel it had the resolution he needed to avoid the mountains on either side of the narrow valley he had to follow to arrive at his destination airport. He said that the peaks on both sides were in the clounds and if he'd just followed the shortest path towards the airport, he would have hit the peaks before he descended below the clouds.

I was interested the way he used the available tools differently. The Garmin Aera he used pretty much only for weather, even though it has a terrain view with pretty good resolution. The 530 is his primary meanns of navigation, and what he used to determine the vertical speed required to reach the destination airport (and thus figure out if he'd be able to make it that far). The GRT synthetic vision is what he used to fly the plane and avoid the mountains while in the clouds.

[dkol]

I've been debating between an FD180 and a skyview and I think this has convinced me to go with the skyview.