Avidyne acquired Ryan in 2005.
Anyway, not trying to defend Avidyne’s history of breaking promises. I just remember my recent experience with Garmin asking them about the GFC700 retrofit and getting the typical arrogant answer “there is no market, we’ve run the numbers, not worth it”. If it wasn’t for Avidyne, there would not be a single modern retrofit autopilot on the market. They have taken the effort to develop an excellent product from ground up even though it was an uphill battle compared to Garmin for whom it would just have been an airframe certification effort because they already have all the require technology certified (autopilot, servos, EHSI, navigator).
I agree with that too, of course, but another way of putting it would be that after Garmin ate more or less the whole birthday cake, all that was left for Avidyne and others were the crumbs lying around – like the DFC90.
And even on that, their man at EDNY told me (paraphrasing) they are not really interested in certifying it, beyond some popular models. The main one were the pre-G1000 SR22s of which there is a few k out there.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the IFD boxes are very well implemented and would be very relevant to European IFR pilots who will likely be getting bent over the barrel and shafted with PRNAV/RNAV1, and who don’t have the room for a GTN750 or who (like me) want a “GPS+MFD” separated solution and two GTN750s would simply not fit. But a bit of realism is called for, I think. I don’t buy the FAA story. This saga has been going on for 3 years now. We don’t actually know what is holding this back. Remember Honeywell were demo-ing the KSN770 in 2008 and it (sort of) worked, but actually the software was completely uncertifiable. I reckon a productive programmer like you could knock up a convincingly working IFD540 with some CPU board, an LCD, and a load of C++ in, what, a few months? I could have done it in my 20s, before I got into girls.
There is a US guy flying with two of them, in a Beech plane which he moved to the Exp category so he could install them. He is posting reports on the Beech group. He is very positive. Obviously they do work. But we just don’t know how far or how close they really are. Maybe I am getting old and cynical but the Avidyne blog is just too smooth to be honest, and to me looks like a load of US-lawyer-approved talk, written to look friendly.
Yes – Avidyne bought the whole company. Ryan ceased to exist. In the USA you call it a “merger” 
Alas Craig from GoCycle remembered Markus but wasn’t able to give me the same show special..
Bloody hell, I must have left an impression last year.
They have a picture of me buying the bike on their stand.
lol
I then had an excellent demo of Garmin Pilot who will bring their “full Europe coverage” towards the end of June.
I remember being told something different in April
Garmin’s Pilot app, heretofore limited to U.S. subscribers, will have international support in May , the company announced at Aero Friedrichshafen last week.
source: AVweb
Hello,
I plan to fly for a full stay to the Aero Expo UK in Sywell. I can fly right to the event which seems to be nice. But where to stay and where to get a rental car? Where to divert in case of IMC weather?
I could fly to Oxford and rent a car there but it just seems absolutely wrong not beeing able to fly to a GA expo…
There,s a very adequate basic hotel on the airfield at Sywell might well be booked up already for this event!
The organisers like to publish a 25 page document telling you how to fly there, including some weird non-radio holding patterns just outside the ATZ.
Whether you like that sort of “traffic management” depends on your attitude to various aspects of British PPL training and flying generally
Personally, when I have flown to Sywell I have departed at a carefully chosen moment so as to arrive there minutes after it opens, to avoid most of the traffic, and I have gone there on a weekday, not a weekend. Even so, last time I went there, ~1000ft cloudbase, I could see about 5 others on TCAS, plus no doubt more without a transponder of any sort, descending in IMC “into me” from above, on the extended runway centreline, presumably descending using Skydemon running on an Ipad On that occassion I was able to speed up a little and get ahead of the main conflicting traffic before they broke out of the bottom of the cloud (which was exactly where I was flying) but it’s not something I fancy doing too often. It all works better with a higher cloudbase, but I would still want to arrive there as early as humanly possible.
Just my point of view and others will differ
Sebastian, I assume you are going there for business. If not, it is not, I would suggest, worth the trip from Berlin.
If you are exhibiting, it’s much better to drive. All you need is for somebody to break off their nose gear (as happened last time I was there) and it causes a lot of havoc before they drag the wreckage off with a vehicle. Personally I don’t drive there (normally) because it is about 2hrs which is not worth it. The food is usual Brit airfield food and there is not much worth seeing on exhibition. It is about 1/5 the size of Friedrichshafen despite being the biggest UK aviation event.
Yes I’m exhibiting but I want to fly there anyway. I think when offering aviation products for personal air travel you have to travel to the show by plane. Anything else is like driving a Volkwagen while trying to be a salesman for BMW…
So for now I was able to reserve a hotel room at the nearby golf course which is about 4km away. There seem to be some ground transportation and else we can ride the folding bikes we have in the plane.
I will fly in the day before the show to avoid the worst air traffic. Finally any suggestions on which IFR + rental car airport to pick as a weather alternate?
