New Advanced 5400T

I recently upgraded my Advanced 4500's to the new 5400 Touch Screens, and had occasion this morning to fly using the latest pre-release s/w. It certainly has a wow factor, and I'm hoping Rob might weigh in here with some pictures, as I was a little busy while flying to take any.
Two things I found way cool: the ability to pan and zoom off-screen. I panned all the way to Anchorage, AK and then zoomed in to see the weather there. I was curious as we are headed there next week.
The other thing was the distance-to-target in the diamonds and balls of other aircraft. They are displayed right on the EFIS in the location where you should be looking, and I had a real demonstration this morning. I had a target 12 o'clock, level, 9 miles away and coming head-on. I watched it count down the miles to 1, and then I got the warning from ATC to start an immediate left turn. I was on an IFR plan, VFR on top of a broken layer.
The High-res terrain with the towers shown almost as if real was way cool, too.

Kudos to Rob and the team at AFS!


Vic

AF-5000 EFIS Screen Shots

Vic,

Thanks for the positive feedback, here are some screen captures from our latest software.

AF-5400 EFIS screen


New weather graphics for XM and ADS-B



Windmill graphics



New tower graphics


New color coded airport signs and traffic graphics


New Transponder touch screen interface


New mapping with selectable airspace info.


We will be having an Oshkosh special on upgrading your AF-3500 or AF-4500 screens, I am working on pricing and more information.

We will also be introducing a new product at Oshkosh that will make wiring your aircraft extremely easy.... sorry you will have to wait until the first day of Oshkosh for more info

Got mine installed

Got dual 5500T's installed but it will be a few months before they get fired up. Great photos!!

Keep us updated Vic on little tricks you discover.

Hi Kelsey: Is there going to be any upgrade for the 3400? I missed the first one, and heard the CPU is no longer available. Thanks for any info. I do love the 3400 as is but would love to have the additional functionality! Bill Dicus

Thanks for the update. Good Stuff!

Curious

Beautiful screens! I do have a question about the touch screens in rough air. Out RV's tend to be a bit rough in heavy chop, and I remember one day flying into Birmingham in a 182. It was rough below 4000 after a frontal passage and 15kt winds. I had flight following IIRC and was asked to change to tower freq. Extending my arm in the heavy chop I could not hit the flip-flop button on the radio. I had to hold my had on the top of the panel and walk my way down to reach it.

How does this situation play out with the touch screens? Riding in a rental truck I can not even type a message on my iPhone on an interstate most of the time.

Have you tested this situation to address it?

When?

When can we get the new s/w if we already have 5500/5600?

BillL said:

Beautiful screens! I do have a question about the touch screens in rough air. Out RV's tend to be a bit rough in heavy chop, and I remember one day flying into Birmingham in a 182. It was rough below 4000 after a frontal passage and 15kt winds. I had flight following IIRC and was asked to change to tower freq. Extending my arm in the heavy chop I could not hit the flip-flop button on the radio. I had to hold my had on the top of the panel and walk my way down to reach it.

How does this situation play out with the touch screens? Riding in a rental truck I can not even type a message on my iPhone on an interstate most of the time.

Have you tested this situation to address it?

Click to expand...

AFS didn't remove any buttons, so you have two methods of making the changes. If it gets rough, just use the buttons and knobs.

Not a big deal!!

BillL said:

Beautiful screens! I do have a question about the touch screens in rough air. Out RV's tend to be a bit rough in heavy chop, and I remember one day flying into Birmingham in a 182. It was rough below 4000 after a frontal passage and 15kt winds. I had flight following IIRC and was asked to change to tower freq. Extending my arm in the heavy chop I could not hit the flip-flop button on the radio. I had to hold my had on the top of the panel and walk my way down to reach it.

How does this situation play out with the touch screens? Riding in a rental truck I can not even type a message on my iPhone on an interstate most of the time.

Have you tested this situation to address it?

Click to expand...

This question always comes up. First, the AFS equipment still has all the buttons so the touch screen use is a great option. I fly mostly in AZ where we have 4G turbulence. I have flown several touch screen aircraft and can tell you it is not a big deal. If it is too turbulent for touch screen, it is like too turbulent for dials and buttons also.

Use with confidence!!!

BillL said:

Beautiful screens! I do have a question about the touch screens in rough air. Out RV's tend to be a bit rough in heavy chop, and I remember one day flying into Birmingham in a 182. It was rough below 4000 after a frontal passage and 15kt winds. I had flight following IIRC and was asked to change to tower freq. Extending my arm in the heavy chop I could not hit the flip-flop button on the radio. I had to hold my had on the top of the panel and walk my way down to reach it.

How does this situation play out with the touch screens? Riding in a rental truck I can not even type a message on my iPhone on an interstate most of the time.

Have you tested this situation to address it?

Click to expand...

We have a lot of real world RV flying experience, our RV-10 has almost 1000 hours on it and we have been flying it with large touch screens for a long time.

The touch screen can be an amazing improvement to an operator interface when done right and under the right conditions. Most of the time the touch screen in the RV-10 is an awesome improvement, changing maps, picking airspaces and entering transponder codes is very easy with the touch screen. When it is turbulent the touch screen can be virtually useless and I find it easier to use our standard push button interface rather than fight with the touch screen.

We recently changed the transponder touch interface to larger buttons to make it easier to use.

Notice the labels for the mechanical buttons that can still be used.

Large Map button icons make changing map screens intuitive.



It was very tempting to cut a significant amount of cost from the screen by eliminating most of the buttons and joystick when we developed the touch screen. If our engineering team had only been dreaming and building in the garage I suspect we would have chosen to cut cost. I have found that nothing convinces an engineer what really works better than putting them in a small airplane in the clouds on a turbulent day. That cool new feature that might have worked great on your desk just caused a huge amount of stress while flying in the real world.


Rob Hickman
N402RH RV-10
Advanced Flight Systems Inc.

turbulence

The comments made here are right on. I was actually in IMC and turbulence the other day. I found that anchoring my hand on the panel and using my thumb worked. As mentioned, the knobs still work, but the touchscreen is so much faster than scrolling through the menus.

Vic

rleffler said:

AFS didn't remove any buttons, so you have two methods of making the changes. If it gets rough, just use the buttons and knobs.

Click to expand...

RV7Guy said:

This question always comes up. First, the AFS equipment still has all the buttons so the touch screen use is a great option. I fly mostly in AZ where we have 4G turbulence. I have flown several touch screen aircraft and can tell you it is not a big deal. If it is too turbulent for touch screen, it is like too turbulent for dials and buttons also.

Use with confidence!!!

Click to expand...

N401RH said:

We have a lot of real world RV flying experience, our RV-10 has almost 1000 hours on it and we have been flying it with large touch screens for a long time.

The touch screen can be an amazing improvement to an operator interface when done right and under the right conditions. Most of the time the touch screen in the RV-10 is an awesome improvement, changing maps, picking airspaces and entering transponder codes is very easy with the touch screen. When it is turbulent the touch screen can be virtually useless and I find it easier to use our standard push button interface rather than fight with the touch screen.

We recently changed the transponder touch interface to larger buttons to make it easier to use. <snip>

Rob Hickman
N402RH RV-10
Advanced Flight Systems Inc.

Click to expand...

vic syracuse said:

The comments made here are right on. I was actually in IMC and turbulence the other day. I found that anchoring my hand on the panel and using my thumb worked. As mentioned, the knobs still work, but the touchscreen is so much faster than scrolling through the menus.

Vic

Click to expand...

Wow, I will consider that question fully answered! Thanks for all the responses, and with experience too! This should certainly satisfy anyone who had any question about operating in turbulent conditions.

AF-5400 Upgrade Program




Click for AF-5400 Upgrade Program Information

New Software

For us that are already using the 5000 series, with or without the touch screens, will there be a software upgrade available?

Thanks

BGS said:

For us that are already using the 5000 series, with or without the touch screens, will there be a software upgrade available?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Yes, we have been sending it to beta testers and should have a production release very soon.

The new software also has the new interface for the remote audio panel:

Update

I know I need to get some pictures up, but we just got back and I am trying to recover from lightning damage to the house from a large storm that occurred while we were gone.

Gone? Yes, we just completed our 3rd trip to Alaska. 52+ hours, and over 9K miles! We went from Atlanta to Cincinatti, Cheyenne WY, Nampa ID, Bellingham WA, Ketchikan, Yakutat, Anchorage, and returned. The overall trip was great, especially ahving another RV-8 for company (Dane Patterson, an RV-8 builder in the Falcon Squadron at Peachtree City, GA, and his wife, Kay).

The AFS screens sure made light work of some tough flying, including solid IMC and approaches to minimums. It almost felt like we were cheating while flying up the coast of Alaska, as the view from the Synthetic vision and hi-res terrain showed the islands and inland waterways as if we were actually looking at them.
And it made flying the inland waterways on the return trip a lot of fun, and added a huge safety factor, as ceilings were quite low, although the visibility was great.

I really wish we could have taken a picture of this particular event, but we were rather focused at the time. I was on the GPS approach to runway 11 at Ketchikan (Carol called the runway lights at minimums) and couldn't help but notice all of the seaplane traffic in the EFIS from the ADSB. There were 13 targets all lined up to land in the channel, and all of them had the distance markers displayed. It was really cool, and not something you see everyday (at least not in Atlanta!).

Flying down the coast of Alaska to Ketchikan on the return was breathtaking. And the lessons in meteorology were certainly on a grand scale. You could see the cold air from the glaciers sliding down and making fog over the ocean water, just like it does when you open your freezer. There were a couple of areas that forced us down to 200 feet because of this (great visiblity underneath), and during one of these times we saw a huge whale do a complete vertical breach. It was really awesome. And I was thankful he/she was off my right wing and not in front of us, or we might have met each other.

The sophistication that we have in the cockpits anymore from people like Rob's team (and others) is truly amazing, and makes trips such as this one a lot of fun and certainly much less stressful.

Vic

AFS Auto Pilot Arinc question

I just completed the upgrade from the 4500 to 5400 and can't get my auto pilot to work in EFIS mode. It works in Alt and heading mode, but not with the Arinc mode.

I have all my other settings are correct after the upgrade, but can't figure this one out.

Anyone have any idea's? I did email AFS, but was hoping to fix it during the weekend.

Thanks!

I'm curious to what is involved with the upgrade.

Suppose I have a 4500 with an arinc 429 interface to talk to a trutrak autopilot and a 430W, and that 4500 has the built in ahrs.

If I upgrade to a 5400 will the new box use the existing arinc 429 interface, talk to the same engine probes, and also have a built in ahrs or will I need to buy more stuff than just the 5400 box?

schu

akschu said:

I'm curious to what is involved with the upgrade.

Suppose I have a 4500 with an arinc 429 interface to talk to a trutrak autopilot and a 430W, and that 4500 has the built in ahrs.

If I upgrade to a 5400 will the new box use the existing arinc 429 interface, talk to the same engine probes, and also have a built in ahrs or will I need to buy more stuff than just the 5400 box?

schu

Click to expand...

Matt, You will need a few things. AFS can tell you more of the specifics:

1 - TCW Backup Battery (the 5400 no longer has a backup battery installed)
1 - AHRS (Redbox that replaces the Magnotometer you currently have) or add an ADAHRS (again, 5400 no longer has that installed inside the unit)
2 - Kalvico sensors that need to be powered by the 5400 and replace your old Oil and fuel sensors.

In my 8 I didn’t have the space to add the ADAHRS, so I just swapped out the magnetometer with the AHRS redbox.

It wasn’t a hard upgrade and I do like the touch screen.

Jack,

Thanks for the response. Few more questions:

What do you mean by Kalvico sensors? Would my existing EGT and CHT probes work?

And by fuel sensors you mean fuel flow? That would need to be replaced?

As for the battery backup box, if I have redundant alternators and a decent ship batter, so I really need this?

Thanks,
schu

Schu,

Oil and fuel pressur sensors. The 5400 requires you to change out the current one you have with the Kalvico. They need 5v power. Which can be from the AFS Wngine Sensor Main Cable PIN 37 GRD and PIN 19 for the 5v power.

I did that as it was easy for me to add those exta wires to the Kalvico?s.

As for the TWC BATT. My ?guess? is that you don?t need it. I have a Vertical Power VP100 that I wired to my OLD 4500 as a backup to the internal backup battery. So again, I just added the TCW for the 5400 backup battery and left my wiring the same to give me the VP100 option as a backup too.

Maybe overkill, but I wasn?t ready to remove wiring and it just gives me more options if I need it.

I built my panel back in 2009, so I am trying to stay relevant. Upgraded my 4500 to the 5400....upgraded my GDU375 to the GDU470.

I?m happy with the 5400.

did the same upgrade last year

I did the exact same upgrade last year, very glad I did. I did the work myself and while not super easy, was well within my ability and Im a biologist.

The Kalico sensors are just plane better, very simple to upgrade.

You can use the existing ARINC, I am. But I will be upgrading to SV ARINC this summer, because with the upgrade you get missed approach and holds to show on AFS screen. The old ARINC doesn't pass thru holds. If your VFR only the existing ARINC would be fine.

Paul

Is there an easy path to upgrade from Skyview? Could it be as simple as switching out screens (and maybe having to find a different backup battery solution)?

Lilely easier

It might even be easier to upgrade from skyview to AFS because they both use the Dynon Hub system. Problem will be the existing panel cutouts. The AFS stuff is sized differently. The AFS 5400 fits in the same cutout as the 4500.

Bugsy said:

It might even be easier to upgrade from skyview to AFS because they both use the Dynon Hub system. Problem will be the existing panel cutouts. The AFS stuff is sized differently. The AFS 5400 fits in the same cutout as the 4500.

Click to expand...

But as a former 4500 user, I really like the extra knobs and buttons on the 5500. The hole is different, but not a big deal to fabricate a new panel. After all, most of us built our aircraft have those skills.

Any reason not to just buy the AF5500 other than the panel mount is different? Does the AF5400 come with something that the AF5500 doesn't or is it just form factor?

akschu said:

Any reason not to just buy the AF5500 other than the panel mount is different? Does the AF5400 come with something that the AF5500 doesn't or is it just form factor?

Click to expand...

My reason was that I have an RV-8 and the swap was just a little bit of wiring and not a complete panel overhaul.

I would have liked to have gone with the 5500, but that would have meant dumping my VP100, SL30, SL40, GTX330,GDU470 and various switches.

Today with all the remote stuff it is easier to install bigger screens and remotely mount the “brains”.

And like Bob said, the 5500 has more buttons on the outer bezel of the unit which makes the user interface a little nicer. If you have the room, go with the 5500. If you are more like my setup, you should go with the 5400.

AFS did a BIG service to the 4500 people by making the 5400 an option when the new line was 5500, 5600, etc...

Becoming an orphan with my VP100 wasn’t a great feeling when Vertical Power sold and another reason I would not recommend them. Love the technology, but not happy about being thrown to the curb!

Whereas, AFS (Dynon and of course Garmin) has always been focused on support! INSERT STEIN HERE...but he isn’t an OEM.....but I still had to include him on any talk about top notch