Anyone have good ol IFR steam gauges in their 10's

I'm seriously looking on starting a 10. I was wondering if any of you folks have 10's with steam gauges. I see King Silver crown systems for sale quite cheap due to guys upgrading to Garmin Glass.

I fly Turboprops for a living with steam gauges in some really hard IFR. I'm kind of used to the ol six pack that has served us well for the last 50 years. I have a nice set up in my Cherokee right now with a 90B slaved up. Works great, never any trouble. My only peeve is that the HSI's are quiet $$$$ and heavy. Though I dont mind having 2 standard CDI's and a DG.

Thoughts,

Rob Grootarz
C-GSXG

Scroll up to the thread titled "Show us your RV-10 Panel"

I have installed both glass, and round in my 10. You will see other examples of what other folks are doing.

Not flying yet, nor am I IFR, although I may go that route after the 10 is done.

planedriver said:

I'm seriously looking on starting a 10. I was wondering if any of you folks have 10's with steam gauges. I see King Silver crown systems for sale quite cheap due to guys upgrading to Garmin Glass.

I fly Turboprops for a living with steam gauges in some really hard IFR. I'm kind of used to the ol six pack that has served us well for the last 50 years. I have a nice set up in my Cherokee right now with a 90B slaved up. Works great, never any trouble. My only peeve is that the HSI's are quiet $$$$ and heavy. Though I dont mind having 2 standard CDI's and a DG.

Thoughts,

Rob Grootarz
C-GSXG

Click to expand...

Rob,
I'm with you on this one. I spent a career flying steam gauges and built an airplane that looks "normal" to me. I did push it a little with a Garmin 430. Build what makes you happy.

John Clark
RV8 N18U "Sunshine"
KSBA

Kinda like wives,
some feel more comfortable with what they've had for years
some want the newest out there
sometimes you have to go with what fits your budget
but in the dark, they all do the same thing

Cost and weight

planedriver said:

I'm seriously looking on starting a 10. I was wondering if any of you folks have 10's with steam gauges. I see King Silver crown systems for sale quite cheap due to guys upgrading to Garmin Glass.

I

Thoughts,

Rob Grootarz
C-GSXG

Click to expand...

Rob,
I too, have steam gauges but a new Enigma Stratomaster is around $3500 for everything including probes and sensors and the weight saved is around 11 Lbs. and no vacuum pump to worry about. It also has an encoder, a built in GPS system and their own HITS system. All the engine gauges are there including a trip computer, fuel used, fuel remaining, blah, blah. The cost is so much better as well. I'm upgrading to glass soon.

Regards,
Pierre

All steam on my -10 panel save the Skymap IIIC moving map GPS. Looks kinda King Air ish.

I was unsure of what to put in my 10 also, but if you ever want to sell your plane, the glass is the thing of the future and your plane would more marketable than steam. I have dual GRT and they are reasonably priced and very easy to use.

131Hrs and going strong.

Probably by the time you sell your plane though, your current glass will be very obsolete unfortunately. Hard to say what old glass will be worth in 5-10 years from now and whether it will be supported still.

Steam will still be just as dated 10 years from now as it is now.

My panel also started with mostly the 6 pack steam gages with two Blue Mountain G3 replacing the AI and DG/HSI. I soon grew disillusioned with Blue Mountain quality and level of reliability so now I'm looking at AFS and GRT. One of the reasons you see so many glass panels is that for the price of a decent HSI you can get a decent glass panel. I you are really stuck on the 6 pack however you may want to look at the Aspen Avionics products. It would look something like this:

Awsome

Funny you should say that. I was just looking at that. the HSI model's arount 10K after the dust settles. A King HSI unit is going to cost you the same. I think this is what I am after exactly. Im not going to be building for a while so by then maybe the price will drop a little. I really hope they keep up this product. It looks great and solves the HSI problem.

What..A vacuum pump?

Think I'd rather suck on the tube than have one of those...

Then again as an IFR newbie maybe I'm just chicken but vacuum pumps are along the same lines of Russian roulette, from what I've read at least..

Frank

Well, A healthy mix (DC / VAC) is always nice. One should be fine flying after a pump failure. Thats why you practice VAC failures when learning to fly IFR. Now that being said, alot of Privite folks don't really do that after they get there rating. It's all about being professiant on what you are flying. I'd rather have a VAC / DC combination than 2 DC systems. Call me old school but it's always worked for me.

Been flying old taildraggers for 20+ years with no electrical system so all these complex panels with 6 packs are new to me .

In planning my -9A panel I was recently converted from my plans for a Dynon 180 to steam gauges. Some of the reasons:

1. Simplicity.

2. Easier to read.

3. Replacements are available everywhere.

4. Some of these glass panel producers are small outfits. For example, one of the PDA based outfits is really a husband wife team and she just got involved when they got married 2 years ago and she has no technical background. What happens if a he gets whacked on the freeway?

5. The big one: Obsolescence. You land at East Podunk North Dakota with a panel problem. You pull out your fancy unit and overnight FedEx it to the manufacturer on a Friday afternoon. They call you Tuesday morning to say that the motherboard (or other essential component in your unit) is no longer manufactured and they can't get replacements. You will have to replace your $7,500 unit with a new $8,000 unit--But it does a lot more, OK? Then you are lying on your back on Thursday if you are lucky, trying to wire up the darn thing, which by the way, has a few changes from your unit. And you need a laptop to program it for your plane, which you left at home...

6. What about the shakeout? As with all new technologies, there is a race going on with each outfit jockeying for dominance and survival. Some of them will not survive and 10 years from now factory support will be nonexistent. Can you predict which one will be there to support their product?

Steam gauges can be easily replaced almost anywhere and even if one manufacturer goes belly up, other brands can be easily substituted.

Glass units are lighter and I intend to get some weight savings by using solid state gyros (TruTrak), but I won't put all my faith in a single do-everything unit.

No glass boxes on my panel

I made the same decision about four years ago.
I have Van's steam guages for both flight and
engine instruments.
I think the cost is nearly the same now for putting
the engine instruments in one glass box. You are
still putting all your eggs in one basket.
The flight guages are still costing quite a bit more, but
may getting to be more reliable.
I would go with Grand Rapids for the engine instruments
if I was designing a panel now. Four years ago, I couldn't
see the glass screens very well, but that has also improved.
Your point about companys going belly up also concerned me.
The glass cockpit is getting better all the time. It's here for
some people and just around the corner for others.

Hold off as long as you can on buying and building your panel,
Tom

P.S. I don't normally respond to emails that don't have any user
information.

Another thought from a glass panel convert

Not many (especially me) practice much partial panel work. The trouble it seems to me is if the vacuum pump makes like an expensive whoopie cushion then two gyros sort of rollover. But they don't necessarily just tumble, rather you can be folowing the AI rght into a 45 deg bank wondering what on Earth is happening.

With a glass box it really has two modes...on and operating or blank screen!...Nothing inbetween.

Assuming you have a backup (electronic autopilot) you simply switch to looking at the good unit..or even turn the A/P on and let it fly you home.

Sure if your box goes blank a 1000 milles from home you might not want to fly back IFR...But yo can still fly when the WX clears up.

I think I would be more nervous about losing all the engine instrumentation than losing the primary flight instruments.

Frank 7a IFR newbie

IMHO a mix of both is ideal, however I would nix the vacuum pump for the steam gauges part and replace with electric.

I'd hate to get stuck with the Beta(not VHS) glass panel, that's why when I'm ready I'll probably go with Garmin, more expensive but should be around in 10 years.

Have steam gauges on my -10. If I can figure out how to post pix I wll. No vacuum, all electric.
TT
RV10 N968TP

frankh said:

...With a glass box it really has two modes...on and operating or blank screen!...Nothing inbetween...

Click to expand...

I thought this was the case until I had my Dynon D10A fail, VFR, in some ways, in the same manner a vacuum instrument would with loss of vacuum. It slowly rolled over. Dynon told me at the time that new planned firmware would would flag such a situation. I don't know if that has been implemented or not. http://www.matronics.com/searching/...UMBER=219?SERIAL=19043022493X?SHOWBUTTONS=YES