[Rainier Lamers]

Available immediately, MGL Avionics is proud to release 16 brand new instrument designs refered to as the "Velocity" range.

These instruments are completely redesigned versions of our well known "Maxi-Single" range featuring a newly designed 3.5" housing that permits mounting in a standard instrument hole either from the front or rear.

The new range has redesigned hardware and software to take advantage of newly available technology and further reduces the allready excellent low current consumption of the previous Maxi-Single range.

More info, as usual on www.MGLAvionics.co.za - click on the "Velocity" Singles tab on the left.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics

 

[jasperlv]

MGL - new instruments

rainer,

can you give us an update on your radios?

when can we see buy the com and see the nav/com?

how does your com handle the active/standby dual monitoring? is it similar to the garmins (sl30 & sl40) or to the icom (a210) or xcom or ????

is there also an intercom built into the radio?

will the nav portion stand alone, feed graphic nav data into your efis or will a graphic 3.5" head be available to display nav info?

what are the prices?

 

[lsu-rv]

YES

all those questions above please..

 

[Rainier Lamers]

rainer,
can you give us an update on your radios?

Yes of course.

when can we see buy the com and see the nav/com?

We have not yet shipped the VHF-10 to the U.S. as we are waiting for FCC paperwork to come through. The FCC tests have been done.
The NAV and COM radios (the remote modules) are two separate units which, if combined make up something that roughly equals a SL30 plus intercom and marker receiver. These are expected end of the year.
We have been using the VHF-10, which is our first aviation RF product as a bit of a learning device to figure out the various certification requirements and paths to follow (with some practical experience) so we can leverage this with our next units - and ensure that that part will be faster.

how does your com handle the active/standby dual monitoring? is it similar to the garmins (sl30 & sl40) or to the icom (a210) or xcom or ????

Similar if you have a single VHF-10 but the audio on receive of the standby is more audible due to different and shorter intervals needed to check the main frequency.
In addition to this, you can couple two VHF-10 radios in a redundant configuration where one becomes the main and the other the standby. This allows a full dual watch radio (as apposed to a dual scan with a single receiver).
However I am thinking of removing this feature possibly as the dual scan has turned out to work better than expected making dual watch not really that desirable.

is there also an intercom built into the radio?

Yes, two.
One is a traditional VOX intercom, the other is our new digital VOGAD system which is able to produce noise suppression performance that is close to a ANR headset but only needs a good PNR headset.
You can choose whichever works best for you and both can be adjusted for a wide range of applications.

will the nav portion stand alone, feed graphic nav data into your efis or will a graphic 3.5" head be available to display nav info?

Both.

what are the prices?

What did the little bird say ?

Cheap, cheap, cheap...

Seriously, I don't really know what the U.S. prices will be like as that is not under my control. To give some form of indication, our current end user price in South Africa is around $570 including taxes but of course this will be a little higher in the U.S. once all shipping, customs, etc has been paid for. Also the next batch of these radios will be a little higher (not sure exactly - I think around $650) as the local cost of components has increased (due to the USD having increased about 40% in value against our own currency).

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics

 

[Rainier Lamers]

VHF-10 VOGAD intercom system

Further to my last post a small explanation of the VOGAD intercom system used in the VHF-10 radio.

Prelude:
I used to fly trikes (in the times my balls where bigger), and intercom systems in those craft where/are tradiationally very bad. This has much to do with the environment - open cockpit with a hurrican blowing in your face while your head is 2 feet from a 60 odd horse power two stoke at 6000 RPM.
In a word - difficult.

The VHF-10 has been largely my attempt to remedy this situation (and is also one reason why it does not have a single rotary control - those don't work if you are forced to wear thick gloves).

VOX is fine and used widely, but it relies on a relatively quiet cockpit - if you turn it up to much, you get problems with loss of the first sylable before the mic opens or have to speak really loud.

VOGAD has been around for some time and there are a few chips dedicated to this - but it has never cought on because it is not all that good or only works in a narrow band of applications.

As our radio is about as fully digital as such a radio can get it follows that all audio processing has moved into the digital domain and the traditional analog circuits are no more.
Being digital it means that a fast processor could potentially start doing work on the audio signal in ways that are not possible or practical in the traditional analog way. So we implemented a digital version of a VOGAD system but used the digital nature of the system to allow the VOGAD to be able to be setup for a wide variety of ambient noise levels and specctra and also made it such that it can adapt itself to changes in signals originating from the microphone.
The bases of a VOGAD system is to identify voice and separate it from noise, promote the voice and suppress the noise. Unlike the VOX there is no simple "on-off" switch of the microphone. Couple this with a good but low cost passive noise attenuating headset and you have a very good intercom that works nicely in a noisy environment. You can also connect ANR headsets of course but the main benifit of these is now somewhat diminished - they can typically still be lighter than PNR headsets though. During tests using D.C. ANR headsets we found our own PNR headsets to give a much better, clearer and fuller voice sound while the ANR's sounded a bit tinny and perceived noise levels between the two systems became rather similar.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics