08-07-2006, 09:18 AM
I finally broke down and installed the wx option on the GRT last weekend. I have been holding off on this as I was hoping for some other solution that better suits my needs. Couple items worth noting:
1. I have an MX20 which has an obscene $5k+ cost to get going.
2. I did not want to clutter up my cockpit with yet another gismo to mess with. I tried a friends 396 and although a nice unit, I found that in practice have double duty entry on yet another gismo was annoying. Putting a flight plan into the 430 AND doing the same on the 396 was just too much work with all the aditional work load being IFR. So I finally ditched the idea of a 396/496 for workload and for cockpit clutter reasons
3. The GRT has only partial features of the other options, but I finally decided that the $1.5k costs gave be the bulk of the information I was interested in.
The installation was straight forward. I got a photo copy page of the wiring diagram and some penciled in notes to go on. It took a phone call to GRT to get it running. I was not impressed with that. A simple DOC of instructions would have been nice. I took the afternoon off and was fortunate to have been able to get them on the phone during business hours to get the efis settings right. Nothing frustrates me more than to be in the hanger at night trying to get something working with critical information in someones head who is in bed asleep. The experimental wold of EFIS's need a lot of work in the doc department. I mean a lot of work. I have owned GRT, BMA, and Dynon and they ALL need help in this department.
I did have to move some serial interfaces around on the unit to get the wx to work. The penciled in notes gave me the right info to do this.
Took several calls to XM radio to get the access initiated on the box. This was 2 hours and a dead battery to get that done.
Total hardware install time was 2 hours. Add phone calls and the 30 min activation wait and see it come on times, and it was 5 hours total.
I flew with it 6 hours this weekend and find it to be worth while. The information is easy to access and generally readable. We had a ton of weather around us all weekend and I actually was able to thread some cells when navigating my flight home from a Kentucky get together. That was nice.
I really like having it integrated into my panel and find this far superior to having to deal with the handheld. When you enter plight plans into the 430, it spawns out to the GRT and the MX20 nicely and makes for a nicely completed system. Having them all talk to each other is key for pilot workload in an IFR enviornment.
The display slows down significantly with the radar info turned on. Zooming in and out as well as slewing around was painful at times. Add the radar loop feature and the system is pretty taxed to get you what you need. Average radar age was 5 minutes. Page redraw times can exceed 10 seconds in map mode. Thankfully I have another EFIS giving me attitude info while messing with radar on the moving map page. WOrking the radar inages and decisioning with a single EFIS would not be doable. You really need full map mode to view the radar and when you do that, your efis attitude is gone.
The GRT display interms of clarity is fair. I have never been that impressed with the resolution and putting wx on definatley exaserbates the issue. Having an MX20 right below it really shows you the difference between a good screen and a fair one. But it is workable and I can live with the clarity and slow refresh speeds.
End of update.
Best,
