There is however a lesson to be learnt from the past.
Certifying autopilots is not easy. I don’t mean collecting the FAA paperwork. I mean actually flying a plane, loaded in all the corners of the envelope, at speeds from Vs to Vne… It’s going to take weeks of flying and tweaking the control loop parameters, per model.
If you don’t do this properly, you get an autopilot which is unstable in some regimes ……………… an STEC autopilot 
HBK did this right, which is why they never had as many airframes on their retrofit model list.
For Dynon, this is still a big hill to climb. Obviously they will go for the low hanging fruit – same as Garmin except Garmin have a whole load more money.
Peter wrote:
Certifying autopilots is not easy. I don’t mean collecting the FAA paperwork. I mean actually flying a plane, loaded in all the corners of the envelope, at speeds from Vs to Vne… It’s going to take weeks of flying and tweaking the control loop parameters, per model.
Dynon has clear instruction on how to tune-up their autopilot for an airframe. When the system is installed, servos are in the brackets (this is the real airframe specific item that requires development), tuning up the autopilot is a matter of a few hours flight. In one-two days, you are done (you need calm and bumpy days).
Hmmm… that isn’t going to do the complete job. Also certified installs will not allow user adjustment – we had that one here before somewhere.
Garmin have entered from the very bottom and ever been eating the lunch of the bigger guys, now supplying jets as big as the Citation Latitude.
It’s only natural that one day the next guy comes in from the bottom and trying to eat their lunch.
The more competition, the better. I don’t think it’s major news in the certified glass cockpit market but certainly big news for the terrible autopilot retrofit market. Bendix King and Avidyne killed their glass cockpits, only Garmin and Aspen survived. I don’t think either of them will get major problems, it takes a lot of work to make the equipment interoperate with the vast number of avionics devices there are. Regarding Aspen, Dynon do not go after their biggest USP which is the form factor, allowing for a simple replacement of 2 round instruments. Only Garmin do to some degree with the G5 but that still lacks a lot in functionality and interoperability.
Peter wrote:
Hmmm… that isn’t going to do the complete job. Also certified installs will not allow user adjustment – we had that one here before somewhere.
Maybe certified install will not allow for change of parameters from the user. But, tuning up these autopilots for a specific airframe is a matter of hours, no more. You first need to calibrate the servos, specify some parameters like min and max speed as specified in section 10 of the skyview installation manual . Then you just go fly and follow the flight tuning guide. Nothing really difficult. These autopilots are made for everybody to be installed and not anymore for the experienced installer.
It’s hard to see a large market in certified light GA (in comparison to experimental/microlight). I would think it’s a 1:10 relation at least, maybe more like 1:50. The only exception is retrofit. People will retrofit their old G1000 with Dynon, but even here the installation costs would severely restrict the sales. Obviously Dynon is aiming at the top of GA, bizjets, TP and heli, where the sales are larger and there is a real profit margin.
Garmin is not that large in the experimental world, except IFR avionics. Typically the panel gets a face lift whenever the aircraft changes owner. That happens every 5-10 years. Some has even gone past ordinary panels, using just small black boxes connected to pads with wireless connections. For VFR this is all that is needed, with token analog backup steam gauge for ASI and alt. IFR requires certified avionics (GPS and often VOR/DME) no matter what, and Garmin is the only manufacturer with a price that GA can accept.
ploucandco wrote:
Well, no. I would expect Dynon to buy Avidyne very soon or have an extended partnership with them
Maybe, but Dynon could develop/certify their own. They already have VHF, ADSB, mode S, GPS. If they did, it would be purely to get rid of a competitor, like they did with Advanced Flight Systems. Is Avidyne a real competitor?
Anyway, who “wins the war” is pretty uninteresting. The important thing is that Garmin gets a real competitor in the certified world. Dynon moving up will free up space at the bottom/mid range. I can’t imagine anyone buying their traditional systems anymore (D10/100 etc) for any other reason than replacing broken stuff. The same goes for the traditional SkyView, but here they offer an upgradable path.
LeSving wrote:
I can’t imagine anyone buying their traditional systems anymore (D10/100 etc) for any other reason than replacing broken stuff.
You would be surprised. I see that many of the aeroprakt 22 (and many other low cost ultralight) that are being sold these days are equipped with a Dynon D180. The Dynon D10A is part of the certified Dynon Skyview offering.
LeSving wrote:
If they did, it would be purely to get rid of a competitor, like they did with Advanced Flight Systems. Is Avidyne a real competitor?
Dynon acquired Advanced Flight Systems and built their new HDX system software with the Advanced screen presentation paradigm. Advanced Flight Systems line of products is still for sale and integrated in the Dynon line of products.
Building a certified GPS system is an immense effort and months/years of FAA certification. Garmin has now a serious competitor with Avidyne in this field.
I’m really thinking about going N-Reg, buying a clean airframe & engine and simply replacing all the avionics. I was shocked at was was behind the panel in my 43 year old plane. It is becoming increasingly cost effective to throw the old out and replace everything.
ploucandco wrote:
You would be surprised. I see that many of the aeroprakt 22 (and many other low cost ultralight) that are being sold these days are equipped with a Dynon D180.
The D180 is a probably a cost effective package for a factory built microlight, even compared with steam gauges. Aeropract probably have a ton of them in storage. I was thinking more about people purchasing these things outright for their own plane. You wouldn’t do that, you would get the simplest Skyview instead, it’s newer, cheaper, more advanced and with an up-gradable path. Or you would get something else entirely.
ploucandco wrote:
Building a certified GPS system is an immense effort
Yes, so they say. Exactly why it is an immense effort to build something according to specs is never explained 
Besides, an IFR GPS in an experimental does not need to be certified in a technical sense. It’s enough to show the GPS meet the performance criteria under the TSO. It’s just that doing this for a one off is much more expensive than buying a unit that is produced under TSO Authorization. But what do I know, I have never built a certified GPS. I just find the concept that it is an immense effort to certify something, a bit odd. Time consuming, yes. Whenever you deal with the authorities, it takes time. But a lot of effort?
ploucandco wrote:
Advanced Flight Systems line of products is still for sale and integrated in the Dynon line of products.
Yes, but it’s just like the 180. First generation “junk” in comparison to the SkyView modular and upgradable system. But, by all means. if Dynon wants to buy Avidyne, they probably will, if the price is right. The way I see it, the only thing Dynon lack now is a certified IFR GPS/flight system.
This and this might be relevant.
You absolutely cannot (for purely practical reasons, in addition to possible certification reasons which I don’t know about) build an IFR certified GPS without licensing the Jeppesen database for it.
And for some reason, AFAIK to date, nobody has licensed the Jeppesen database on a non TSO product, especially not for one which does GPS approaches. My suspicion is that Jepp refuse, on the grounds that they are jointly liable if somebody kills themselves with it.
It always comes back to that. IFR certification without GPS approaches is OK for “airspace equipment carriage compliance” but nobody in this user sphere cares about that in the real world but the inability to fly GPS approaches renders it useless for practical flying if you want IFR capability. Admittedly you could fly LNAV ones by loading up user waypoints but you still won’t get LPV.
I too think that this “certification is hard” thing is put out continually to cover up for what is really a dire shortage of money (and consequently hardware and software development resources) among the players in question. But also the functionality of modern IFR GPS boxes is substantial. We are not looking at a KLN94 with LPV added (which IMHO a clever developer could do an exact emulation of in under 1 man-year). We are looking at 10x more detail which needs to be coded and tested, plus the VHF and UHF stuff (COM NAV LOC GS) and you can’t spend 10 years on it, so you have to have a whole team and then everything slows down a lot. Then, the box has to interface to umpteen 3rd party devices (flow totalisers, etc – look in the back of the KLN94 IM for a small taster, or in the GTN750 docs for a bigger taster) and that stuff needs to be tested too (in practice it often isn’t… e.g. the KLN94-GTX330 interface, documented in the IM, was never tested).
I know “modern business ethics” is to push out the box and collect some money ASAP while processing bug reports from irate users who you know will keep their mouth shut because they know that if they go public with it they will lose the support of their dealer and they need that to get the fix delivered when it comes… But one still needs to do a lot of coding and a lot of testing.
