dan said:
It doesn't do EGT peak detection, that I can tell. That's one of the biggest reasons I steered clear of it......
How will you know when the first cylinder peaks as you lean? Those little bar LEDs sure aren't gonna give you a good enough indication of it......
)_( Dan
RV-7 N714D
http://www.rvproject.com
Au Contraire I'm afraid....How many hours have you flown behind one of these? I have for hundreds of hours with my injected engine aggresively running LOP and it works just fine. All of their newer generation units will display ALL 4 EGT's or ALL 4 CHT's at once.
Couple of friendly "counter points":
1) Not to sound sarcastic here, but come on....does your engine regularly peak on random cylinders thereby necessitating the need for the computer to tell you which one is there first? Most Lyc's I've flown behind only take a little while to learn which cyl is has the hottest cht and hottest egt, and they usually behave close to the same way repeatedly. If things are changing so much that it's an absolute necessity to have the computer tell you which one leans first on today's flight verses yesterdays flight, it might raise my curiosity.
2) In general if your EGT spread is fairly wire (50+ degrees...about a 5% variation at normal lean EGT peaks) across the cyl's, the same cylinder normally displays the same characteristics and you simply set the readout to show you thay cyl. You can have it also show you all 4 at once if you desire. My point being, you get used to watching that normally "hot" cyl when leaning your engine.
3) If you EGT spread is nearly perfect or "GAMI-ized", then a spread of 10 degrees really doesn't matter that much at all (at 12-1400oF...that's less than 1% variation). Pick a cylinder and lean to it.
4)Last but not least, I'd be cautious when lumping this in with the "high cost" or as you quoted "expensive" units. I believe the unit you're flying behind cost almost double (+/-) a lot of the IK stuff, so of course you'd expect it to do a bit more.
My above message may sound defensive or biased, but it's really not. I'm in a unique situation in the fact that I literally get to play with most of the engine monitors out there (and usually have at least 1 of each in the shop), as well as representing and selling units from Chelton, Grand Rapids, Dynon, Advanced Flight Systems, IK Technologies, etc... I truly believe each one of them has their own pros and cons, value, and placement in a particular persons airplane, and fill a particular need. Any of them that you buy will be better than steam gauges, and most people will be happy with whichever one you choose.
Not saying the IK stuff is any better or worse than the others, but in this market it's nearly impossible to do an Apples to Apples comparision between products given the vast differences in price, display, sensors, probes, installation, engines, users, functionality, etc... Pick the one you like and works best for you and buy it. You'll be happy!
Just my 2 cents as usual!
Cheers,
Stein