Discussion: Will Skyview STC radically impact the four seat market?

Ever since I sold my last airplane I've been strategizing my next move. With -2 due next month (another boy) clearly a heavy hauling 4 seater will be something I need to look at or a 6 seater if I just want a "one and done" airplane we can grow into.

My plan all along was an RV-10. However with a new house, a baby and a toddler, work, air guard flying, etc strategizing the time management to build it would be the biggest challenge.

The recent announcement of Dynons plans for the Skyview however has upended everything. Suddenly a lot of older certified airplanes with good bones, but run out panels and avionics are now a lot more attractive. With several hundreds of hours behind the Skyview, the prospect of a new affordable panel in a suite I'm familiar with in a (insert production single or twin here) has become a lot more attractive. A well cared for V-tail bonanza can be had, revamped and a full skyview installed (when it's approved of course) for 2/3 or less of the price of building an RV-10. That's a lot of years worth of gas and annuals....

Discuss?

Definitely a good question.

My take on it is that there are several benefits you'll get with an RV-10 over and above a certificated airplane. Not even considering the satisfaction of building it yourself:

Performance. The 10 will outperform most affordable 4 seaters.

Efficiency. The 10 will be more fuel efficient than them too, especially ones that compete with it on performance.

Lower maintenance costs. Most cert. airplanes that can compete on either performance or efficiency are going to have retractable gear. That adds cost to every annual and complexity to maintenance tasks.

Experimental stuff. Want to put in an electronic ignition? Go ahead. New avionics tickle your fancy? Sure. Just do the stuff because you can. Plus it will cost a lot less too.

Do your own conditional inspections if you want and get the certificate. Do your own maintenance if you are competent to do so.

I think these benefits really tip the scales in the 10's favor even considering a fast path to avionics upgrade for cert planes now. Also don't forget that those airframes, even if they have good bones, are stil 20-50 years old now (at least the ones that are truly price competitive are).

I am building a 10 and the recent announcements made me think about the idea of picking up a decent old Mooney or Bonanza with a beater panel, but the 10 came out the winner in my mind.

The guys on the Beech forum are very excited about the Dynon STC. For 16k plus install (est 10k) you get an all digital panel with an autopilot and ADS-B out.

What is not yet clear is whether or not any of the analog (aka steam) gauges will have to be retained.

Raymo said:

The guys on the Beech forum are very excited about the Dynon STC. For 16k plus install (est 10k) you get an all digital panel with an autopilot and ADS-B out.

What is not yet clear is whether or not any of the analog (aka steam) gauges will have to be retained.

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The Baron that has the Skyview belongs to a good friend and former neighbor who is also a Vetterman homebuilder. When I looked at it, I don't there was much in the way of steam gauge retention - he went alll glass!

Raymo said:

The guys on the Beech forum are very excited about the Dynon STC. For 16k plus install (est 10k) you get an all digital panel with an autopilot and ADS-B out.

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So are the guys on the Cirrus Owners and Pilots forum, for the older "steam gauge" equipped airplanes.

Sig600 said:

SNIP
A well cared for V-tail bonanza can be had, revamped and a full skyview installed (when it's approved of course) for 2/3 or less of the price of building an RV-10. That's a lot of years worth of gas and annuals....

Discuss?

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No matter how pretty you make the panel, it will never perform like an RV-10. Add the massive amount of cash to keep one of these spam cans flying and you quickly see that the panel is the lesser issue for this hypothetical discussion.

Carl

Maybe

I flight plan 160kts at 15gal/hr in my 6place 1967 Twin Comanche C/R. Patiently waiting for a full glass panel to go along with that "too costly to mfg" airframe. I would love a -10 to be a hangar mate for my -9, but as it is, the $150k difference between the two will pay for a lot of gas.

That being said, I think the experimential avionics STC is going to breath new life in some of the older certified aircrafts. Exciting times indeed!

Carl Froehlich said:

No matter how pretty you make the panel, it will never perform like an RV-10. Add the massive amount of cash to keep one of these spam cans flying and you quickly see that the panel is the lesser issue for this hypothetical discussion.

Carl

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That's part of the equation, but not all. My uncle owns a very nice 2001 Cessna 172, and while he would dearly love to have the performance that comes with a 10, he is completely scared off by the thought of having an experimental that he didn't build himself, and he has neither the time nor the talent to build. He will forever be a "spamcan" owner because he has no desire or knowledge to build, and takes comfort that professionals do his maintenance and inspections. He is, however, completely in love with my panel in my 9A - and will likely put the Dynon suite in his 172 within the next 12-18 months. His reasoning is that he's going to have to invest big dollars in the next couple of years for ADSB anyway, and he might as well go all-in.

You can bet he's not alone in that thinking.

Carl Froehlich said:

No matter how pretty you make the panel, it will never perform like an RV-10. Add the massive amount of cash to keep one of these spam cans flying and you quickly see that the panel is the lesser issue for this hypothetical discussion.

Carl

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There are a lot of older certified airplanes that run circles around the 10 in terms of performance. With a dynon panel they'll do it for 1/2 the cost of a 10. Throw a second engine or 2 more seats into the equation the disparity grows exponentially as does the capability. No doubt the 10 will win on the cost of ownership, given a long enough timeline.... it's just a matter of how long you're willing to wait to hit that point. For a bigger family the 10 will never compare to any six seater

So back to the original point, does anyone see this as a tipping point towards the affordability of modern glass panel airplanes, or will this just be a good idea that is another option?

I think it will expand the "upgrade market"

As an example my Tiger was built like many others with no autopilot, and a current certified STC'd 2 axis autopilot is about $20K installed. This is over a third of the aircraft value.

For not much more money, the experimental glass panels will simply include the autopilot function, as well as ADSB and new comms as previously mentioned.

It may take a while but I think the many low airframe time certified aircraft will simply get better, and more modern, with age.

I think Dynon's timing on this is perfect - there are a lot of people with older spamcans looking at the ADSB 2020 deadline and wondering what they are going to do - this gives a reasonably priced option for a full panel upgrade that will restore the utility of an older airplane, not just add a widget behind the existing tired panel.

a big question that has not been answered, does dynon have anything in the works to interface analog radios to the unit. It seems crazy to spend the money to put a skyview in an older airplane and not have the HSI NAV on the skyview. so that will add another 5k to 10k to the price to upgrade to a serial capable nav radio.

I would love to put a dual skyview system in my warrior, but it has dual kx155s w/gs neither one will interface with the skyview. there are a lot of those radios out there.

bob burns
N82RB RV-4

Radical Impact - Nah

Adding this stuff won't affect the performance. For VFR aircraft, it's an upgrade for the sake of an upgrade.

It'll make avionics technician a better career path, though.

Dave

n82rb said:

a big question that has not been answered, does dynon have anything in the works to interface analog radios to the unit. It seems crazy to spend the money to put a skyview in an older airplane and not have the HSI NAV on the skyview. so that will add another 5k to 10k to the price to upgrade to a serial capable nav radio.

I would love to put a dual skyview system in my warrior, but it has dual kx155s w/gs neither one will interface with the skyview. there are a lot of those radios out there.

bob burns
N82RB RV-4

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Probably the KX155's will morph into GNS430/530 or the latest certified 650 type Garmin units.

My Tiger, like a lot of planes from that era, got updated to a single KX155 and kept a KY-170 from the original installation. Even those were upgrades in the plane's early life, quite a few are still sporting the original Narco stuff.

Upgrades historically happen - what you will see now is much more "bang for the buck".

David Paule said:

Adding this stuff won't affect the performance. For VFR aircraft, it's an upgrade for the sake of an upgrade.

It'll make avionics technician a better career path, though.

Dave

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Nah... it's a safety and ease of flying upgrade.

Even with only a few hours Phase I testing on my RV-6A, the advantage of an autopilot, traffic display and a large moving map is showing to be a great improvement for future cross-country flying.


Yes on the avionics technician bit, but having just installed a GTX-335 transponder in my Tiger I think you will find that these major upgrades will simply end up being a "rip it all out and start again" effort.

az_gila said:

Yes on the avionics technician bit, but having just installed a GTX-335 transponder in my Tiger I think you will find that these major upgrades will simply end up being a "rip it all out and start again" effort.

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As a guy who has made his living doing avionics and has been asked time and time again to fix original radios in 60's and 70's vintage spam cans, I will say the ONLY way to approach an upgrade in these airplanes is "rip and replace". Start with a good audio system, properly wired, as the core of your radio stack, and expand outward from there. So many aging spam cans have constant "readability" problems with their radios because years of people doing quick-and-dirty repairs, installs and modifications have left the core of their audio wiring in tatters. The value of that old wiring is zero. Spend the labor to install new, and save on long-term troubleshooting costs. Get the avionics shop to "connectorize" the core wiring (e.x. mic hi, mic lo, PTT, phones hi L, phones hi R, phones low, dimmer voltage etc) on a DB9 connector so the next time you want to change a radio you just disconnect the old one at the DB9 and install your new pre-wired rack with matching DB9 connections.

As for the original poster's question, those who practice the art of overhauling vacuum-driven primary flight instruments should be giving consideration to retraining in a more modern field. Vacuum-driven instruments are soon going to be like the proverbial buggy whip, a thing of the past.

Canadian_JOY said:

As a guy who has made his living doing avionics and has been asked time and time again to fix original radios in 60's and 70's vintage spam cans, I will say the ONLY way to approach an upgrade in these airplanes is "rip and replace". Start with a good audio system, properly wired, as the core of your radio stack, and expand outward from there. So many aging spam cans have constant "readability" problems with their radios because years of people doing quick-and-dirty repairs, installs and modifications have left the core of their audio wiring in tatters. The value of that old wiring is zero. Spend the labor to install new, and save on long-term troubleshooting costs. Get the avionics shop to "connectorize" the core wiring (e.x. mic hi, mic lo, PTT, phones hi L, phones hi R, phones low, dimmer voltage etc) on a DB9 connector so the next time you want to change a radio you just disconnect the old one at the DB9 and install your new pre-wired rack with matching DB9 connections.

......

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Interestingly with the "rip and replace" for the modern equipment the number of wires has gone down.

With modern serial busses the instrument/box interconnect is much reduced. But the ability to read manuals and set programming in the various equipment is much increased.

Also, I think the older planes didn't use the concept of a single point ground - I can't find one on my Tiger. This may also be helping the "readability problems" mentioned in older planes.

So Joy's professional comment on how to do the upgrade will have the effect of making these upgrades larger, why leave any of the old stuff behind if it's going to cost almost as much to do the new/old interconnect?