TRIO AVIONICS X TRUTRAK

HI ALL,

I AM STARTING ORDERING AVIONICS FOR MY RV7 PANEL, I ALREADY CHOOSE DYNON D100&D120 , GARMIN GTX327, SL40COMM, AND GARMIN 296 GPS WITH AIRGIZMO, BUT I JUST CANT DECIDE WICH AUTOPILOT SHOULD I GO NOW, TRIO AVIONICS W/ ALTITUDE HOLD OR TRUTRAK DIGIFLIGHT II ??

CAN YOU GUYS USING THESE AUTOPILOTS HELP ME?? I HAVE HEARD THAT BOTH OF THEM ARE VERY GOOD QUALITY AND STABLE, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR PROS AND CONS OF EACH ONE, FEATURES AND ETC.

THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ALL INPUTS

HENRIQUE CASTRO

Trutrak

Trutrak ADI Pilot II,

Bank angle, Pitch (Fake AI), and DG for basically the same price....

2 part autopilots

I am also looking into autopilots, but my purchase is months away. (I do not want to say years away. That sounds so far.) What I see, is that the autopilots come in two parts. First, most people have a wing leveler. Then some people also have an altitude hold. It appears that these two parts can be purchased and installed independly of each other. Trio's altitude hold autopilot looks very nice, because you can start with the basic altitude hold and then upgrade to altitude set and altitude steering. On the other hand, I know that the true track altitude hold will work with EFIS that I want to use, which is the GRT. Comments along these would be great.

TruTrak

I have one of the earliest DigiTrak units...deposit paid about 6 months before they were being delivered (about 4 years ago??)...and it was good. I noticed the DigiTrak would occasionally "unhook" in an uncommanded slow turn and this started happening more often recently. I pulled the unit, sent it to TruTrack through thier distributor, SteinAir, and they upgraded the hardware, software, etc. and it works better than it ever did. Excellant service. Meanwhile I installed an AlTrak and I have had excellant results with this as well. The only negative is the weight which is about 3 LBs for each servo which I thought was somewhat heavy. I don't know what Trios weighs but I have seen the units and they look like a lessor quality of construction. I would not hesitate to recommend TruTrak.

Dick DeCramer
N500DD RV6
Northfield, MN
155 hours

Meanwhile I installed an AlTrak and I have had excellant results with this as well. The only negative is the weight which is about 3 LBs for each servo which I thought was somewhat heavy. I don't know what Trios weighs but I have seen the units and they look like a lessor quality of construction. I would not hesitate to recommend TruTrak.

Click to expand...

Looks can be deceiving.

I have flown Navaid, TruTrak and Trio units in my RV-6 and I can assure you the quality of construction (and performance) of the Trio systems is first rate.

Couldn't decide either, so I went with one of each.

I liked the Trio display for the wing-leveler, and the Tru-trak servo mount setup (Altrak) for altitude.

Trio vs. Tru Track

I installed the Trio (heading only) and I love it. Worked great first time without any tweeking plus it has a lot of great features. I have it hooked into two handheld gps units (garmin 295 and an Avmap IIIC ). A simple flip-flop switch directs which unit provides commands to the Autopilot and it works great with either GPS unit.

L.Adamson said:

Couldn't decide either, so I went with one of each.

I liked the Trio display for the wing-leveler, and the Tru-trak servo mount setup (Altrak) for altitude.

Click to expand...

Oh, yes but if you go with Trio's EZ-2 altitude hold with vertical speed you can easily upgrade to the 3 with altitude hold/vertical speed and climb to altitude.
As you can tell.............I am a BIG believer that Trio is the choice

BTW, they are great to work with and easy to install. Trio's new servo is the cat's meow.

I HAVE A RV9A 180 LYC. WE HAVE ABOUT 130 HRS AND WE ARE USEING THE GRT EFIS AND AND EZ PILOT WITH A TRU TRAK ALT HOLD. IT ALL SEEMS TO WORK. THE EZ PILOT IS EXCEPTIONALLY EASY TO INSTALL AND DOES EVERYTHING IT IS SUPPOSED TO.

THE GRT EFIS IS ONE OF THOSE RARE THINGS THAT PREFORMS BETTER THAN ADVERTISED. COMBINED WITH THE EZ PILOT WE TRACK THE BUILT IN GPS OR WE USE IT ON THE HEADING MODE. IT HAS AN EXCEPTIONAL EMERGENCY COURSE REVERSE MODE.

FRED

While I sell and like both units along with both companies, keep in mind that when using something as powerful as the GRT EFIS system (which I'm also a big believer in - we've now sold hundreds of them)....you won't be able to take advantage of all the benefits of hooking a 2 axis AP to the GRT EFIS. With the mid range TruTrak coupled to a GRT EFIS you can basically control the AP through the EFIS, and shoot quasi GPS & ILS approaches...not something you can do with either companies stand alone units or at least not nearly as well. Of course we're talking the GRT "big efis" here, not the sport.

Just my 2 cents, but if I was spending the bucks on the GRT EFIS, I'd spend the extra few hundred bucks to take advantage of the functionality in the GRT.

Cheers,
Stein.

Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,
Check your PM's,
Regards,

SteinAir said:

While I sell and like both units along with both companies, keep in mind that when using something as powerful as the GRT EFIS system (which I'm also a big believer in - we've now sold hundreds of them)....you won't be able to take advantage of all the benefits of hooking a 2 axis AP to the GRT EFIS. With the mid range TruTrak coupled to a GRT EFIS you can basically control the AP through the EFIS, and shoot quasi GPS & ILS approaches...not something you can do with either companies stand alone units or at least not nearly as well. Of course we're talking the GRT "big efis" here, not the sport.

Just my 2 cents, but if I was spending the bucks on the GRT EFIS, I'd spend the extra few hundred bucks to take advantage of the functionality in the GRT.

Cheers,
Stein.

Click to expand...

I'm not quite follwing you here. What is required to take advantage of all the functions? A GRT EFIS (not Sport) and what autopilot(s). I thought the Sport would work (talk) with the trutrak autopilots just no approaches.

I need to go to GRT's shop and get a demo (its only a few miles from where I live) but you got me wondering and I'm not ready to buy any avionics yet.

TRIO

I have an EZ-1 Altitude Hold and love it! As far as wing leveler,
I currently have a NavAid and have already written Santa.
I would love to see a Trio Autopilot under the tree this year!
The features of the Trio and listening to others in my area that fly
with it have convinced me to buy Trio over TruTrak.

OK, here's the big differences.

GRT Sport: Will only output lateral RS-232 signals (read GPS or NAV course only) to a single axis AP. Works with either Trio or TruTrak (EZ Pilot or Any of the TruTrak's).

GRT Horizon: Outputs both vertical and lateral guidance via a combination of RS-232 and ARINC connections. This allows for all the approaches, GPS steering (horizontal & vertical), Vertical Speed, etc.. All of which are possible with the Horizon.

The Horizon will still drive the single Axis AP's (both TruTrak & Trio), but to take advantage of the vertical component and the lateral ARINC commands you need at a minimum at TruTrak Digiflight IIVS or IIVSGV Autopilot.

I know this all gets to be a bit confusing, but trust me. If youi're spending the $10K to have a nice dual screen horizon system, spend the extra few hundred bucks on a little bit more expensive AP and then you get to use all the goodies that GRT outputs. Of course you can use a single axis AP and it'll work beautifully, but the price difference between 2 single axis AP's (be it Trio or TruTrak) and the higher end Digiflight II series is in the hundreds of $$'s - not thousands!

So, I'm just saying that if you're spending $12-$15K on a nice EFIS/AP setup anyway, why not spend just a few percent more?

Cheers,
Stein.

At Sun 'n Fun, GRT was talking of an autopilot add-on for both the Sport and Horizon using TruTrack servos (I think). Anyone heard anymore on this?

I was certainly all over their $400 GPS moving map add-on. Especially when my question about the cost of database updates was met with "Why would we charge for that?"

difference between Sport and Horizon 1

Hi Stein,


Thank you for the information about the GRT EFIS. When I talked with the folks at GRT I was under the impression that there were only two functionality differences between the sport and the Horizon 1. The differences were 1. the sport could not talk with other GRT units and 2. the sport did not include the HSI. Are there more functionality differences? Any differences will not change my mind. My plan is to first get a sport and then upgrade to the Horizon for the price difference. I do know that there is some work to upgrade for example the Horizon has an external AHRS.

Thanks again Stein!