brianwallis

brianwallis

VAF moderator
Hello, I'm looking at putting either one Dynon EFIS in the panel and also the Dynon engine monitor unit as well in the instrument hole next to it..... OR I could get the FlightDek D180. It looks like I will save a fair amount of money buying the 180.... but then I have to carve up the panel and spend that same amount of money.... Does the 180 have any options that the two smaller Dynon's would not have? Looking for input please. Which should I do.... plug two holes in the panel with the two dynon units or make a big rectangle in the panel? Anybody got some Dynon units for sale?
Best
Brian Wallis
 
Brian,

They share the same options.

It seems like the D180 works like two units sharing the same screen.
 
PS. One advantage to going with a D100 EFIS and a D10 EMS is that the D100 can display your EFIS on 2/3 of the screen, an HSI on 1/3, and you can leave the D10 displaying the engine info.

However, if you went with the D180 you can still display the CDI and GS on the HSI screen and whatever you want on 1/3 of the screen. If you have the HSI displayed and something goes out of bounds on the EMS side, then you still get the warning on the bottom of the screen. And, I think that 1/3 will switch to the engine display. I've not seen this happen but that is my understanding of how it works, I could be wrong on this detail.
 
As a side note, make sure it is compatible with whatever auto pilot you are putting in, if you plan to do so. I just learned from our pal Stein most other brands won't work with them. It was news to me....
 
Dynon thoughts.

As Bill has said, having 2 screens really lets all of the Dynon display options out. You have the advantage of screen redundancy in case of display faults, and lots of choices on how to display your selected information in a much less cramped area. A few extra bucks here will be money well spent, I assure you.
The D180 however is an awesome choice where space is severely limited, but after 100 hrs. behind a 100 and 120, I find the display much too cluttered IMHO.
As for the autopilot, it seems Dynon has a very affordable and guaranteed compatible option available. To me, that sounds like an advantage, unless you already have another AP installed....

Regards,
Chris
 
No AP yet

No AP installed yet. The Acft is IFR but I'm not. The IFR ticket is next. I'll go with the Dynon AP one day... I hope. I wanted to save the 800 or so by getting the D180 instead of the two smaller instruments.... But I'm a big fan of redundancy and I would have to carve up my panel if I get the D180... And there goes any money I saved... and also the redundancy... Still looking for pros and cons, input is very appreciated.

Best
Brian Wallis
 
gbrasch said:
I just learned from our pal Stein most other brands won't work with them. It was news to me....
Click to expand...

A TruTrak or Trio AP will work absolutely fine in an airplane with a Dynon EFIS and/or EMS. They are fully standalone devices, requiring no input from any EFIS to operate (although they do require a working GPS to do much, unlike the Dynon AP)

What he meant to say was that you cannot fly synchronize the heading bug on your Dynon EFIS with a TT or Trio. You can dial in the heading you want to fly directly on the TT or Trio, but you can't sync them between the EFIS and AP. Some of the other EFIS' will "lie" the AP so that they can fly a VOR or ILS by giving them GPS Steering commands, but this is a hack to the other AP's that don't want you to do this without spending big $$. Of course, now your AP is fully reliant on your EFIS for a coupled approach, so there's no redundancy.

Of course, to actually do that sync with the other brands, you need ARINC-429 on both the AP and the EFIS, which means it costs at least $1K more than a basic AP and EFIS. The integrated Dynon AP already costs thousands less than just a TT or Trio and will of course fly the heading bug, ground track, GPS course, or even a localizer with no additional expenditure. If you really need redundancy in your AP from your EFIS, even a second EFIS and AP from Dynon costs less than just the AP from the competitors, and it's fully redundant as both an AP and an EFIS.
 
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Brian,
As others have said, there is no feature that the D180 has over a D10/D10A or vice versa.

I believe you are looking at either two 4" screens or one 7" screen. In this case, there is NO redundancy. The EMS is an EMS, the EFIS is an EFIS. If you lose your EFIS, you can't display it on the EMS, since there is now no EFIS data in the cockpit. There are some super corner cases where just the screen on a device fails and the sensors still work, but we would never advertise or suggest that you rely on that very improbable failure.

So you are looking at a non-redundant system in both cases, and about the same number of square inches of screen. Personally, I'd buy the D180 since the PFD display is bigger, one unit is easier to deal with, and it's cheaper. But in the end, it's up to you and what works best for you. There really isn't a functionality tradeoff here.

Now if you were talking D100 and EMS-D10 vs D180, then there are some real benefits to that over a D180 (but again, not redundancy).
 
gbrasch said:
As a side note, make sure it is compatible with whatever auto pilot you are putting in, if you plan to do so. I just learned from our pal Stein most other brands won't work with them. It was news to me....
Click to expand...

That is not exactly correct. The difference with Dynon is that it INCLUDES an autopilot, but does not generate autopilot commands of its own for use by an external AP.

In my case I have a GNS 480 which generates ARINC steering commands useable by Dynon, TruTrak, Trio, etc.; a Dynon D180; and a TT AP, which will fly a precision GPSS approach right down to minimums, or if I hit the appropriate button will follow the GPS instructions for missed approach right on out to the fix and hold. The Dynon DISPLAYS the appropriate HSI information, but it does not GENERATE any of that. They "work" just fine together; the difference is that the TT receives it's "instructions" from the Garmin and not from the EFIS.

If you installed the Dynon servos instead of a separate autopilot, it will fly a non-precision approach but will not perform descents / ascents unless you tell it to (or at least not yet). The advantage is that you save thousands of dollars with this solution, and I suspect that once you get used to it you could dial in a combination of course and descent rate commands referencing the HSI for, say, an ILS and it would track pretty well (more of a pilot-assist mode on an approach vs. a fully coupled approach).

The feature you are talking about that some other EFIS units have is the ability to "consume" information about GPS, VOR, or ILS and CONVERT that data to data an external autopilot can use. You can then enter your flight plan into the EFIS instead of your IFR certified GPS and it will "get you there."

So it's really apples and oranges. GRT and others will generate AP commands, but you have to buy an external AP. Dynon includes an AP, but you must have an avionics device capable of generating the AP commands.
 
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Regarding the autopilot, what I said was correct - exactly...no if/and/or/buts about it. The Dynon equipment will not talk with anyone elses autopilot other than their own. You can change the marketing spin anyway you want, but that's still the fact. Like Blue Mountain, the Dynon stuff is proprietary to them and won't drive other autoilots no matter what you do. In Glenn's case, he already has a different mfgr A/P in his plane and assumed that he could drive his A/P from his Dynon which just won't work-exactly. Fact is it won't drive any a/p other than it's own, so there is no "not exactly or almost" about it - it's cut and dried.

This has been hashed to death over and over in many threads, and yes the Dynon has it's own internal version of an autopilot - search those threads if you want specifics. Let's not turn this into another autopilot thread, because there are plenty out there in the archives with all the information....no need to rehash it because there is no new functions to rehash.

Back to the original post. Going with one large screen verses 2 smaller screens. I have the good fortune to get to fly behind both quite frequently. Speaking as a builder here and not someone trying to sell you something...I have a D-10A currently in my plane and it works great. That being said, if the 100 or 180 were avaialble many years ago when I built the plane, I'd prefer that. Not necessarily because of pure functionality, but because I really like the larger Dynon display. With their current screen layout, I find it much easier to read the larger screen EFISes than the smaller ones. Price wise it's about a wash in the end. There are other benefits I can think of - the 180 is very nicely integrated from a functionality point of view. Even though two smaller ones can be connected, the D180 just is a bit nicer in my opinion.

That's my 2 cents!

Cheers,
Stein
 
redundancy issue revisited.

Although my 100/120 pair has performed almost flawlessly, (Dynon addressed and promptly repaired an attitude issue early on in my 100) I did talk to a pilot at SNF last year that said he had suffered a screen failure in his 100. The DSAB bus carried the attitude info over to his 120, and he was able to continue the flight, and get his unit promptly repaired. That is the only time I have ever heard of a screen black out on a piece of Dynon gear. So, that seems like redundancy to me, and is why I have listed it as an asset in my post above.
Is it full dual redundancy, no, of course not, but in this case it was an asset to have the screens able to share the information.

Regards,
Chris
 
redundancy

I was hoping that there would be an (edit to correct my terminology) Emergency reversion function like we have in the bigger aircraft between of two screens on the D-10 and the D-10A. I know now that this is not the case. So I cannot see the Artificial Horizon on the Engine Monitor or vice versa. After talking with Dan from Marketing, I've decided to wait at least two weeks before buying anything. The synthetic vision module will have a price announced in two weeks or so and it may be more affordable than thought. After talking with Mr Reister, I've also found out that the new Synthetic Vision is not backwards compatible with the units out there now.
Best
Brian
 
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Mornin'...

...Brian and friends. I have quite a bit of time in my buddy's -4 with a Dynon 180 and it's a great piece! You're very space-limited in both the -3 and the -4 and this is the way to go.

I'd have to really sit down and think about how much hard IFR I'm going to do in the -3. I'd bet not much so redundancy becomes a lesser issue.

All my buddy has is a backup airspeed...for the rest you look out the window.

Regards,
 
brianwallis said:
I was hoping that there would be a reversion function like we have in the bigger aircraft between of two screens on the D-10 and the D-10A. I know now that this is not the case. So I cannot see the Artificial Horizon on the Engine Monitor or vice versa.
Click to expand...

Brian,
You CAN see the AI on the EMS and the EMS on the AI. But this is when everything is working fine. The EMS doesn't have attitude sensors in it, so if the D10A fails, the EMS has nothing to display. This is actually no different than a G1000, which in most installs has only a single attitude sensor in the plane. If this fails, you have no attitude, no matter how many screens in the plane are still functioning. This is why many certified G1000 installs require a backup attitude indicator in the plane.

Redundancy is a complex topic, and we try and take a very conservative line. As mentioned above, it is possible to have a failure on the EFIS and still see data on the EMS. We probably see this failure less than 10% of the time we see a failure in a unit. So it's not great protection, and not what we like to call redundancy.

If you really want redundancy in a Dynon D100/D10 system, you want to buy a D180 and then a D10A or a D100. This gives you totally redundancy in your attitude, since two totally separate boxes provide that information. No one failure can take away your attitude/airspeed/altitude/etc.

As Dan mentioned, SkyView is coming soon. You can get redundancy in this system as well, but the smallest screen in SkyView is 7" and there's no redundancy without two screens, which doesn't seem to fit what you need. I do promise you can fit two 10" screens in a RV-8 if you really want to, so there's more space than you may think in your 3. If two 7" screens are an option for you, SkyView might be a really great solution. One nice thing about SkyView is that you can add redundancy in the future, since it uses networked sensors instead of sensors in the box, so if you decide you need a second or even third ADAHRS in the future, you can purchase just that and add it to the system.
 
Oops

I apologize, I should of said emergency reversionary option. I did go back and insert the word emergency. On the S-92, reversionary means emergency and I have a small switch panel for my reversionary controls on my center console and the only time we use it is when we have a failure of a component. My apologies. We swap screens all the time but it's never referred to as reversionary. Thank you for your time and patience. I'm really looking forward to putting a Dynon in the bird.

Best,
Brian.
 
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