Updated Panel Pilot Report

[Bennett]

I had AoA in my Nanchang CJ6A. I loved it. Whether pulling 5Gs or 0.5Gs is was always dead on. So I am looking for one for the Mooney.

I rejected the Bendix/King unit because it is not AoA. It is actually a repackaged Lift Reserve Indicator (LRI) which is "sorta like AOA but not really". I want something that tells me where both stall and best L/D are regardless of loading. The LRI won't do that.

Would you tell me more about "Rick's" unit?

Rick manufactures the CYA 100 AOA unit. Rick is on our forum, and there there is a thread on the forum that discusses his unit. Recently he offered a group buy, and a number of Mooney (and Beech) owners bought the units. As I mentioned, I like the way it is built, but I am not sure where I would mount the sender, or exactly the indicator. The indicator is a very nice small unit, that I think would fit right above my ASI with a little careful work in cutting my new panel - makes me a bit nervous that it will come out to the same standard as the rest of my panel. I will talk to LASAR at my next oil change and see what they say.

[donkaye]

According to the FAR and your MEL it must be a clock that displays hours, minutes, seconds. Timers don't count (pun intended) but I am sure your GPS clock is acceptable as long as it is displayed and continuously visible during approach. 

Ahhh, I don't think you took a close enough look at my panel.  I believe the Clock and Timer completely meet the requirements of FAR 91.205 for instrument flight.  Hours, Minutes, and Seconds on Both in digital form.  Like I said, the MVP 50 is one nice piece of equipment.

[donkaye]

Don, is your backup AI the Trilogy EFIS? That is a unit I covet, but the expense drove me off. I settled for an electric Mid-Continent "Life Saver" AI, with battery backup. This replaced my Turn Coordinator, so it is in my scan. I guess i'm just old and set in my ways, but I still like round guages. I had the complete Dynon SkyView units (2) in my DOVA LSA, and they were wonderful instruments, but even after 100 or more hours in that airplane, I was still glancing at the backup ASI and altimeter when landing Loved the horizon for pitch and roll, but hated the side tapes. In level flight I didn't mind the tapes so much, but there is nothing like a needle at the rotational angle you expect to see for instantaneous confirmation. If I were doing the panel again, would I replace the steam gauges with the Garmin 600 two panel setup you have? Maybe. For sure I would use the JPI 930, and get rid of the electronic tach, electronic MP, and the original EGT and OT that I am currently stuck with. The JPI 830 gives me the information I want when coupled with the GTN 750, but the 830 cannot be primary. I didn't notice an AOA indicator in you new panel. I bought the AOA unit that Rick builds, but I haven't installed it yet. Looks like a good unit, but I am waiting to see what else will pop up on the market. The Bendix unit looks nice, but it uses the Alpha probe, and I don't want to install and calibrate that unt. The new Garmin unit appears to use a pitot tube (where we currently have ours?) which would make for a neat installation, but the indicator looks clunky, and I would rather have the indicator mounted in the panel adjacent to the ASI. I'm curious to know your thoughts here.

 

Yes, my backup is the L-3 ESI 2000.  It all depends on who you know.  It turns out that I know and had seen for many years at Oshkosh a Senior Manager at L-3.  She used to work for Mooney.  Last year at Oshkosh I told her I was upgrading my airplane and really wanted to put in the ESI 2000.  She told me sometimes they would sell a unit out of their loaner pool and that she would look into it.  I got a call shortly after Oshkosh that she had a unit available, would refurb it, yellow tag it and give me a one year warranty on it.  She'd also give me a good deal on a new WX-500.  I immediately went for it.

 

The JPI 930 looks great and one could be proud to have it in their panel. but it is just an engine monitor and fuel flow monitor displaying one piece of information at a time.  The MVP 50 is so much more albeit with a display that is not as nice as the JPI 930 screen.  Just one small but very important extra on the main page is both a clock and timer that satisfies the IFR requirement for a clock.  That alone saves panel space by not needing an independent clock.  Since this is not a write up on the MVP-50, I recommend looking at it in detail before choosing another engine monitor at upgrade time.  I chose function over looks and have not looked back.

 

I had so much going on with this upgrade, that I decided not to have any more delay by adding one more thing.  Also Mark at Alpha systems encouraged me to wait before purchase of one of their AOA systems because they were coming out with new displays.  So I'm waiting on the AOA.  I did NOT want it in the panel, but in peripheral view on the glare shield.

[MooneyCFII]

 

The JPI 930 looks great and one could be proud to have it in their panel. but it is just an engine monitor and fuel flow monitor displaying one piece of information at a time.  The MVP 50 is so much more albeit with a display that is not as nice as the JPI 930 screen.  Just one small but very important extra on the main page is both a clock and timer that satisfies the IFR requirement for a clock.  That alone saves panel space by not needing an independent clock.  Since this is not a write up on the MVP-50, I recommend looking at it in detail before choosing another engine monitor at upgrade time.  I chose function over looks and have not looked back.

 

I had so much going on with this upgrade, that I decided not to have any more delay by adding one more thing.  Also Mark at Alpha systems encouraged me to wait before purchase of one of their AOA systems because they were coming out with new displays.  So I'm waiting on the AOA.  I did NOT want it in the panel, but in peripheral view on the glare shield.

Not sure what you mean by "only displaying one piece of information at a time" with the EDM-930. With the exception of the mandatory gauges mandated by the STC that allows you to replace the existing instrumentation, which must always be displayed, you can bring almost any of the channels to a full-time display on the front. You may also change the layout of the gauges to cluster them the way you want. I have chosen to have both fuel used and fuel flow displayed all the time. I clustered fuel used with the two fuel level displays. I could have picked fuel remaining instead of fuel used but I find doing the subtraction in my head is no problem. And if I wanted to get rid of one of say the voltmeter or the ammeter, I could have fuel remaining displayed too but felt that redundant and a waste of display real-estate. Since the CHT, EGT, and TIT are always displayed I turn off scanning of those, leaving just the "interesting stuff", e.g. time to empty, fuel remaining at destination, fuel to next waypoint, miles-per-gallon, amps2, etc. 

 

And I would not choose an analog-like display of MAP and RPM. Since we tend to set those to fixed values the numbers are more useful than an analog-type display. Doing so would have freed up more display space for other channels. Likewise with CHT. CHT changes slowly enough that numbers are more than adequate. But that is picking nits. Lest anything think I am not happy with my EDM-930 I want to say that I am, in fact, quite happy with mine.

 

As for AoA, I mentioned I had it on my CJ6A. I mounted the indexer on the glare shield so it was just to the left of my direct line-of-sight when heads-up during landing. I also found that I used it a lot when doing aerobatics. When I totally botched a maneuver it was easy to pitch to zero-alpha, let the airplane go ballistic, and then begin to recover once I had more airspeed. 

 

One of the things I teach people transitioning to the Mooney and the Comanche (both designed by Mooney and sharing the same wing) is that these airplanes demand better speed control on final than do other airplanes because the drag does not increase as rapidly as alpha increases. That means that you *really* want to be right on approach alpha if you don't want to float forever down the runway in the flare. You can do it without having AoA by calculating different approach speeds for different weights (just like the heavies do) but that is indirect. I would rather have that indexer right there so I can just pitch to approach alpha and then control glideslope with power. 

[carusoam]

So after this string of posts...

Glass is in and old analog guages are on their last legs....

Back-up vaccuum systems have turned to extra batteries...

The only thing saving the analog gauges is their status. They are already (mostly) paid for and they are in the panel.

Glass contains more useable data in the smallish IP of a Mooney.

You can be 80 years old and interpret the scads of data as quickly as it comes to you.

You can be 17 yrs old and do the same. ( referring to the young buck flying dad's O around the world )

I may have under estimated all of our ages a little.

AOA or excess lift indicator(?) is beneficial over having to do the math with an ASI.

The clock and the VS gauge take up an unreal amount of space, and one has an annoying delay waiting for the mechanical parts to work.

The future is looking brighter.

How's my logic today? Did I miss anything?

Best regards,

-a-

[Cruiser]

you got all that out of this string? I'll have to go back and re read it.     

[MooneyCFII]

Good synopsis. FWIW right this instant I am at RedBird in San Marcos, TX, getting trained on the Garmin G1000 so I can teach it effectively to late-model Mooney owners. Glass *IS* here to stay and I have to stay ahead of it to be effective.

But there are a LOT of airplanes out there with steam gauges. The first thing I got from my G1000 training is that the G1000 can do so much for you that you can let your basic IFR flying skills atrophy. Transitioning from steam to glass is not difficult. The transition back, especially for relatively new pilots who have grown up with glass, could be very painful.

[Danb]

Don. I believe your clock is located on the inside right corner of your Garmin, you have the choice as you know to display it in current time,it or 24 hour time. I have a 1000 and that's where my clock is and my friends B plane has a 600 and that's where his is displayed..your correct that your unit is in compliance with the fars, just because the time c/n be seen in your pix d/n it's nonexistent

[Cruiser]

Guys, guys, guys...... I was just poking at Don. 

 

Of course he is in compliance. 

[carusoam]

Tom,

I may have combined a thread or three...

But it is interesting to see the number of thought leading people going glass.

I'll be the guy with the digital equipment with analog displays for a while still.... Reciting the words "picture in you mind's eye...."

Why picture something in your mind, when you can have a digital pictorial display driven by Mgobs of memory and processing power?

Best regards,

-a-

[adrian]

Nice report, and a great looking panel. The MVP50 and EDM930 are both great pieces of equipment. I flew with the MVP50T, and it has a large number of spare channels for recording pretty much anything you can imagine wanting to record. The 50P would have been great in the Mooney, but I chose the JPI.

Just one small question:

 Just one small but very important extra on the main page is both a clock and timer that satisfies the IFR requirement for a clock.

Does the clock that's permanently displayed on the EDM930 not satisfy that requirement?

[kmyfm20s]

Don, how come you kept the Shadin? Is there anything lacking with the MVP-50 fuel management that you felt the need to keep it? Amazing how much instrumentation can be consolidated now with glass!

[donkaye]

Don, how come you kept the Shadin? Is there anything lacking with the MVP-50 fuel management that you felt the need to keep it? Amazing how much instrumentation can be consolidated now with glass!

 

The Shadin is very accurate from my experience.  It gives multiple pieces of quick information without changing screens; just a knob twist.  I'm glad I kept it because I found out after the fact that one thing the MVP-50 does not do is calculate fuel to destination and fuel reserve at destination.  It only calculates fuel to waypoint.  If the waypoint isn't the destination, you don't get that information.  But the Shadin has it and the 750 has it.

[MooneyCFII]

Yeah, fuel at next waypoint is not too useful. If one is flying really long legs one wants to know if fuel is going to be an issue while there is still time to do something about it. OTOH, comparing time-to-empty to ETE-to-destination works too. It is all about time.