[akschu]

Group,

I have a couple of questions about the AFS offerings:

1. Are the new units with the new hardware shipping yet? It is my understanding that the 4500 and the 3500 will have the same hardware soon.

2. Does the synthetic vision come with the 4500? If not, what is the price? I seem to recall $300

3. Do I need to purchase the map option to make synthetic vision work? It seems like the maps would need to be loaded in order for the synthetic vision to work, but was wondering if I can omit the map option and still have synthetic vision.

4. What exactly do I get for $1500 more when I buy the 4500 over the 3500? Seems like it's only the mounting, joysticks, brighter screen, and synthetic vision if included.

5. If I spend the extra money on the 4500 will it support more future upgrades than the 3500?

Here my thoughts if anyone can check me on this: I'm thinking that the only reason I would want a 4500 over the 3500 is so that I had a nice way to pan the map with the joystick. The mounting and brightness aren't big issues to me. If that is the case, and assuming that I buy synthetic vision on the 3500 for $300, then the extra $1200 for the 4500 really only buys me the map. If that is true then I think I would rather just spend $400 more and buy a garmin 495 as it looks like a WAY better mapping system, it provides some battery powered redundancy in the cockpit, and it can tell me about the airport, runways, etc.

Thanks,
schu

 

[RV7Guy]

Support Forum

I talked to them the other day. The 4500 will be shipping very soon. Around Oshkosh time. He was waiting for a new chip as I understand it. All testing is going great and they are in the tweaking mode.

Go to the web site, click on support and join the forum. You can get all of the specific answers there. Great people, great product.

I'm putting two 4500's in the new project.

 

[akschu]

Got some answers from Rob today, so I figured I would post them:

1. Are the new units with the new hardware shipping yet? It is my understanding that the 4500 and the 3500 will have the same hardware soon.

Rob says they aren't shipping yet, but they are building several as I write this for in house testing. Also, he confirmed that the 3500 and 4500 will have the same CPU.

2. Does the synthetic vision come with the 4500? If not, what is the price? I seem to recall $300

Confirmed that synthetic vision comes with the 4500. I forgot to ask about the price for the 3500.

3. Do I need to purchase the map option to make synthetic vision work? It seems like the maps would need to be loaded in order for the synthetic vision to work, but was wondering if I can omit the map option and still have synthetic vision.

Rob says that the map option is required to make synthetic vision work. So if you want synthetic vision you will need spend $800 on the map software.

4. What exactly do I get for $1500 more when I buy the 4500 over the 3500? Seems like it's only the mounting, joysticks, brighter screen, and synthetic vision if included.

You get the mounting, joysticks, led screen, and synthetic vision.

5. If I spend the extra money on the 4500 will it support more future upgrades than the 3500?

Rob said that the 4500 doesn't buy you anything as far as future upgrades, its mostly just the joystick, screen, mounting with synthetic vision thrown in.

So for those that don't care about synthetic vision you would probably just be money ahead to buy the 3500 and save the $1500 for the hardware and $800 for the map which puts you pretty close to buying a garmin 695.

Rob suggested that I look at map update costs as well, which I haven't thought about, anyone know what it costs to keep the 695 updated?

Thanks,
schu

 

[jrouault]

The extra knob is worth it

I am privileged to have had the opportunity to replace one of my 3500 screens with the the 4500 test bed system. I can tell you, the extra knob plus joystick alone is worth the cost of the upgrade. The extra menuing capability (reduced button clicks) provided by the additional knob is fantastic and using the joystick to pan the map is great. Once you have used these new capabilities you will not want to go back. I am looking forward to replacing my other 3500 with a 4500 once the general production systems are available.