Metric / European unit support for EFIS D10A?

[karoliina]

Hi,

Dynon D10A looks otherwise quite perfect for our TL-96 Star (which is also called as StarSport in your country)
but there is one shortcoming in it, the units -
it seems to be designed for the US market only forgetting the European market:
The airspeed indication is selectable only between knots and mph whilst the plane's speeds
etc. are all indicated in metric units in users manual and is operated based on those in other words km/h (kilometers per hour).
As a software engineer I guess that converting the knots value in software to km/h shouldn't be an overwhelming task, so could
this be considered to be part of some future software version as this would please European customers who
are using the metric units in the air speed indication whereas the altitude indication is in feets.
QNH values are given as hPa (hehtopascals) on airports here. Your manual seems to tell about the baro setting that
it is configured in D10A with some incompatible value used in USA (which I do not recognize), so I think some conversion
here would satisfy European customers further (e.g. today's QNH at local airport seems to be 1008 hPa).

One more suggestion for the engine monitor: Rotax 912 UL, 912 ULS and 914 are here quite popular
engines and the original Rotax Flydat instruments are very bad and quite many would need a better engine
monitor and they are changing those Flydats to ordinary instruments. However, if you would support Rotax,
you would potentially have many customers among the EU. Gas is really expensive here and fuel efficient
auto gas operated engines such as the Rotax 91x series are popular.

Best Regards,
Karoliina Salminen
Finland

 

[dynonsupport]

Karoliina,
Thank you for the suggestions.

We are working on adding KM/H to the EFIS and hope to have this in a future release in the next few months. As for hPa, this is the same as millibars, which we already support in the EFIS. When you are setting the barometer, just press "units" and it will switch from inHg (US standard) to millibars/hPa.

We are also working on other engine packages for the engine monitor and apprecitate your comments about Rotax support. Are there any unique things that we would need to do to provide complete Rotax support besides selling sensors that fit these engines? We already support water temperature in the current engine monitor, but are there any other requirements?

 

[boehmda]

Hi Karoliina,

I thought the only country using meter and km/h is Russia.
I am surprised, we here at Switzerland use ft and knots. Even at the Swiss Airforce we changed in the 90[ch8217]s to the [ch8216]standard[ch8217] units (ft / knots).
I do not see the need for the metric units. Only my 2 cents.

Regards
Daniel Böhm
Switzerland

 

[karoliina]

Hi,

It is quite plane dependent thing, the Piper Arrow a friend of ours showed to us last weekend was
with knots airspeed indicator. In European ultralight/microlight aircrafts however, I have seen
nothing else but km/h. Thanks for the information that millibars / hPa works. We use meters however,
to measure distance and in the case of moving map in some future product, distances would be
nice to be configurable as kilometers.

About Rotax support:
The original Roax Flydat shows the following measurements:
- RPM [varies between 1500 and 5800 rpm depending on propeller blade angles and throttle setting]
- EGT/PTO [unit: degrees Celcius]
- CHT [unit: degrees Celcius]
- Oil temperature [unit: degrees Celcius]
- EGT/MAG [unit: degrees Celcius]
- Oil pressure [unit: bar] (in Flydat indicated as 0.1 x bar)

What could be good to add at least:
- Fuel flow indicator [how much have flown since last startup, flow [unit: liters] per minute/hour, estimated remaining
operating time with the used fuel economy etc. - those weren't present in the original Flydat and because the
mechanical fuel indicators are usually quite inaccurate in these aircrafts, it would be good if there would be some
more accurate way to see how long the plane can be flown safely before going down for refueling]
- Some support for use with constant speed propeller where the rpm remains the same but
blade angles change and it changes the engine utilization without affecting the rpm. I am no expert on this
area since we don't have constant speed propeller in our aircraft. We have one WT9 Dynamic in our
flight club however, which has a such thing.

The original Rotax instrument was bad because there was a plenty of delay before it showed
oil pressure. In case of failure the engine would have been ruined before the indicator would have
shown the fault (thus enabling the pilot to turn off the engine asap) and because of that we have
currently replaced the Flydat with a set of traditional instruments (and I have the Flydat here at home
on the living room table...).

Best Regards,
Karoliina Salminen

 

[dynonsupport]

Karoliina,
The engine monitor already does all of the things you ask for and more. Constant speed propellers use MAP (Manifold Absolute Pressure) as a way of measuring power instead of RPM and we support that. We also have fuel flow with a totalizer, calibration for fuel tank level senders, and much more. We also have fully configurable limits, alarms, and display ranges to catch any problems quickly.

It sounds like all you would need for your Rotax engine is a sensor kit. For EGT and CHT, we support J and K thermocouples, so those are probably already availible. We're researching what else is needed, but we expect to have a sensor kit very soon. As far as we know so far, no software will need to be different for a Rotax engine.

 

[peter zeman(Guest)]

hi,

do you have any new information about EMS sensor kit (software) for the Rotax 912 engines and metric units support in EFIS D-10A?

peter,
czech republic

 

[dynonsupport]

Getting a sensor kit for the Rotax engines put together is one of our top priorities right now. I don't have a firm timeline to offer, as we have a lot of different things we're working on before Oshkosh.

Could you give me an idea of what sensors you'd be looking for? Many of our sensors will work in any plane with the right adapters. The fuel, oil, and manifold pressure sensors are a prime examples. Since those are connected via tubing or pipe adapters, it's not difficult to make them work in a variety of engines. Other sensors (like the included water temp sensors for Rotax) are more specific. If you gave us an idea of what sensors you have that you'd like the EMS to read, and what sensors you'd need, that would be useful information.

 

[peter zeman(Guest)]

hi,

thanks for your prompt reply. i'm just getting rotax 912 engine and don't have specific sensors yet. when i get the sensors i'll get back to you on that.

peter

 

[David Bryant(Guest)]

In the OATSET on the display the units to enter is not stated. It would be nice to have a units reminder for the time it is entered rather than recalling what the setup units page is set to. ie degrees F or C (or Kelvin or Rankin.... added to the right of the number in OATSET.

 

[dynonsupport]

We made the decision not to show units in order to minimize the screen usage. We also assumed that unless you are close to -40 deg, it is pretty easy to tell if you are in F or C.

We'll consider adding this in the future. It's much more of a possibility on the 7" display with all the extra screen real estate we have there.

 

[KenLeonard]

Just another person using Rotax 912 engine chiming in. My experimental already has steam gauges for both engine and flight instruments, but I expect to add the EFIS next year and as the engine instruments fail (they already have 240 hours) probably replace with your product.

 

[dynonsupport]

As an update:

We should have Rotax support by the end of the month.

Our current EFIS software supports KM/H, so if you wish to use this just update to the latest revision of SW.

 

[Tom Storey(Guest)]

From my perspective in the UK it would certainly be useful to mix units. In common with the rest of Europe we buy fuel in litres but to the best of my knowledge most C/S equipped aircraft fly with a manifold pressure in inches. Temperatures don't matter too much in units, just keep in the green.
regards
Tom
RV9

 

[fabjab]

I would also like to second the suggestion to mix units for the EMS. I have mine set as metric right now, but would like to display the MP in inches Hg.

Thanx,

Fabjab.