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Blast from the (Blue Mtn) Past

Sam Buchanan

been here awhile
While chasing down some random links I came across an interesting site that opened up memories back to the very early days of the EFIS in experimental aircraft circa 2000. I dipped a toe into the Blue Mountain whirlpool before making an expeditious exit, but many builders were burned by the Blue Mountain debacle and the dubious business practices associated with it.

It seems Greg Richter is very much alive in Thailand and producing lighting equipment for indoor farmers...some of which no doubt sell their produce in Colorado. Here are links:

http://revolutionmicro.com/about-us

http://revolutionmicro.com/home-2

No one ever doubted Greg's ability to design innovative products, maybe his latest endeavor will have a better track record than his efforts in Copper Hill.
 
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Wow, I did not know that Blue Mountain had syntactic vision as they have put a picture of EIFS that has syntactic vision.
From the Website
"We?re proud to have built, flown, and pushed this industry forward. Much of what you see in modern automotive navigation systems can be traced back here."
 
For the first time over the weekend, I noticed that a friend of mine who posts here as BCP Boys has a large screen BMA EFIS. He says it is still working great after all of these years, although no updates are available.

He's about to redo the panel in his airplane, partially out of the idea that it is better to plan and implement your upgrade path at your pace, rather than have a failure dictate the when and where...
 
interesting...

Thanks for posting this. It was a great learning opportunity to search the archives as I have never heard of this organization and what they were known for.
 
I vividly remember him arriving at Oshkosh in his Cozy with the new EFIS circa 2000. I had never seen such a thing- nobody had. It was one of those moments that I knew the world had changed, or at least E-AB aviation.
 
I remember his forum at OSH titled, "Aircraft Wiring for Smart People." I think that turned me off of the BMA company from the start. I am the one working with BCP Boys to replace his BMA panel with a G5, GMC307 and GPS660. He sent me drawings. I downloaded others. We couldn't find anything that actually matched his hole pattern and cutouts. We ended up using a tape measure to get the panel layout with pictures and hand-drawn layouts. I hope the laser cut overlay fits. Those were the early days, and BMA wascertainly somewhat cutting edge, but...
 
I vividly remember him arriving at Oshkosh in his Cozy with the new EFIS circa 2000. I had never seen such a thing- nobody had. It was one of those moments that I knew the world had changed, or at least E-AB aviation.

Greg was in my EAA chapter way back when. He would ride along with various members of the chapter and test his pre-prototype hardware and software while riding along in the right seat. Bright guy. Promising products. Once BMA got off of the ground, it was apparent that <seemingly> every new product needed a few more iterations of testing before it should have been released to paying customers...
 
I was to be the initial customer of the EFIS Lite, but serious flaws which were evidence of non-existent field testing of the device led me to abandon my involvement with the BMA experience.

I gained a lot of respect for the Dynon guys during this period of time. Blue Mountain was getting the lion's share of magazine and internet publicity, but the Dynon group kept their D10 under wraps (and lost market share) until they were sure it would work reliably in the field. Obviously, their's was the market path that would lead them to eventually dominate the EFIS market as BMA descended into a tangled and messy demise.

I bring these past experiences to mind whenever I see a vendor bringing unproven product to market in spite of fancy marketing (a certain automotive engine adaptation comes to mind....). Skepticism can be a good thing.
 
I met Greg at OSH one year when he had a booth. He totally sold me on the "Aircraft Wiring for Smart People" book and had me convinced that every wire in the plane should be 16 guage no matter what. Good thing I wasn't ready to start building yet.....
 
I met Greg at OSH one year when he had a booth. He totally sold me on the "Aircraft Wiring for Smart People" book and had me convinced that every wire in the plane should be 16 guage no matter what. Good thing I wasn't ready to start building yet.....

I came across that pdf last month and started reading it. There were about 3 things that I completely disagreed with by page 10 I decided to search on the author to see the validity. That's how I learned about Blue Mountain and then their demise... I never finished the pdf.
 
Late to the party, but in March of 2006 Greg needed a ride to Covington, TN to check the progress on a repair to his jet. We live just about 4 miles from Copperhill, TN, where his shop was. We did the trip in a Cirrus I owned from 2003 to 2007.

Quite a character!

32286560140_626633f9f0_z.jpg


I recall he wanted me to give him training towards his instrument rating in that jet. I politely declined.
 
Still works

I wasn't around Experimental aircrafts back then but I did fly behind the 4th rev. EFIS of BMA for the past 3 years. Looking back at what was available at that time, he was certainly ahead of his time. I fly VFR with this plane so no updates didn't bother me that much but my biggest complaint was that my autopilot didn't work well and I had no support for it. It did have Synthetic vision but the hardware (chipset) that was available from 10 years ago just didn't allow for fast refresh of the screen so it was just choppy. Also there just wasn't enough GPS information 10 years ago so graphically it was no where near the accuracy that you can find today even on an iPad app. The syn vision was essentially overlaying Terrain information and not so much airport, runway, obstacles, traffic, etc.

Anyway, with Jesse's help I have taken my first step towards an updated panel and as of yesterday I'm happy to report that the Garmin autopilot is working perfectly after a firmware update. Now a few months of VFR flying with the G5/GMC 307/660 hardware and then decide on G3X Touch add-on and using G5 as a backup so I can start flying IFR (will be exciting).

Fun times :D


PS: The BMA EFIS still works perfectly. If anyone is interested in it for a cheaper project (maybe a light sport) please let me know.
 
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Lol...blast from the past. Had the EFIS One ordered for the Glasair SIIRG I was building at the time. Are those "marijuana" grow lights he is selling now? The old Cozy Jet now resides just a few miles from here in Houston. Friend of mine flys it overhead now and then bringing back memories...
 
Thanks Sam, great stuff. I did fly behind an early EFIS Lite, and it was good till it broke. Changed to Dynon--those were crazy days, but I was thrilled to not have any vacuum. cheers
 
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