Now that I have about 100 hours on my RV-8, I thought I'd give my impressions of my autopilot/AP74 and see how it compares to what others have found. First thing - the interface between the AP74, the servos, and the EFIS is first class. It looks good and it's easy to use. However, I don't feel that it is capable of flying an RV in IFR conditions at an acceptable level. In smooth air it is a good work load reducer and allows me to focus on sight seeing, map reading, etc. But when you get into turbulence of any kind pitch oscillations and roll corrections are so annoying that it is actually easier to just turn it off and hand fly. I would in no way consider this an IFR capable autopilot system. I've tried every setting there is in the setup program and the best performance for my airplane is 100% torque and pitch sensitivity of 12/roll sensitivity of 5. There needs to be some other way to adjust or program the servos to dampen out corrections. I don't know what that would be, but don't buy this autopilot if you think it will fly the airplane as well as you can (in an RV anyway). It will point you at your destination at a reasonably close altitude on a VFR day, but that's about it.
Overall Impressions of Autopilot Performance
- Thread starter shersha
- Start date
Hey Dynon Support,
Please fill us in on some of the things you are working on with regards to improving the AP's performance and whether or not you are planning to give the operator more setup parameters to tweak in order to fine tune the AP to one's particular aircraft....similar to those that your competitors provide access to.
A little info here and there on the direction you are going and an update on how much resources are being applied to making the AP better might slow down some of these reports of poor performance and prevent more from giving up on the Dynon AP. I hate seeing reports that this AP cannot hold IFR tolerances....
I am buying my Dynon gear a part at a time as I build my panel and the holes are already cut and the wires pulled for the AP74/HS34, I would love to know that I can have faith that Dynon is all over making this AP better.....
Please fill us in on some of the things you are working on with regards to improving the AP's performance and whether or not you are planning to give the operator more setup parameters to tweak in order to fine tune the AP to one's particular aircraft....similar to those that your competitors provide access to.
A little info here and there on the direction you are going and an update on how much resources are being applied to making the AP better might slow down some of these reports of poor performance and prevent more from giving up on the Dynon AP. I hate seeing reports that this AP cannot hold IFR tolerances....
I am buying my Dynon gear a part at a time as I build my panel and the holes are already cut and the wires pulled for the AP74/HS34, I would love to know that I can have faith that Dynon is all over making this AP better.....
Scott,
I am puzzled by the poor performance you have experienced with the AP in your RV8. I have flown numerous approaches in my RV8 including some in IMC with light turbulence, and have been very pleased with the performance. However, I have not flown in moderate turbulence, so I can't comment on that. The settings I use are torque 100%, roll sensivity 13, pitch sensitivity 20. It seems that altitude is always held within +- 20 ft. I almost always fly with GPS (430W) as the Nav source (although the Nav/Loc) works pretty well. Tracking is excellent, and the new ARINC roll steering works like a charm. Is it possible your servos have the excessive play that some were reported to have? My servos are installed per Dynon documentation with the roll servo in the right wing. My AP system consists of a D10A, HS34, AP74 and an EDC-D10.
-Alan
I am puzzled by the poor performance you have experienced with the AP in your RV8. I have flown numerous approaches in my RV8 including some in IMC with light turbulence, and have been very pleased with the performance. However, I have not flown in moderate turbulence, so I can't comment on that. The settings I use are torque 100%, roll sensivity 13, pitch sensitivity 20. It seems that altitude is always held within +- 20 ft. I almost always fly with GPS (430W) as the Nav source (although the Nav/Loc) works pretty well. Tracking is excellent, and the new ARINC roll steering works like a charm. Is it possible your servos have the excessive play that some were reported to have? My servos are installed per Dynon documentation with the roll servo in the right wing. My AP system consists of a D10A, HS34, AP74 and an EDC-D10.
-Alan
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2005
- Messages
- 13,226
While we've received mostly positive feedback on our autopilot so far, there are a few outliers out there that we don't have completely solved yet.
Scott - a couple of quick points: we have a couple of known-good RV-8s using 20 for the pitch sensitivity setting. How does your airplane respond to that particular setting? Also, if you don't have EFIS datalogging on, please flip it on at 1 the second interval setting, and the record at boot set to yes, so that we can look at what your aircraft is doing as we try figure out what's different about your setup.
Also, though the forum is a great place for discussion, deep technical support is best done by giving us a call at 425-402-0433. We can make a lot more headway, and also get you to the right people (the autopilot engineers, who do not directly staff this forum), to help us understand where we need to improve.
Our overall goal is to get any many aircraft flying flawlessly as we can. Whether that involves more settings/knobs to adjust, we can't say at the moment. But I hope our history for working with customers to improve our products is enough to convince you that we'll do the right thing, and where we can't, we'll make it right with a refund if it comes to that.
One thing I can't stress enough is that we need YOUR help (people that aren't completely happy) to move forward. So please, anyone that is having autopilot issues, call 425-402-0433 to get into the technical support loop.
Scott - a couple of quick points: we have a couple of known-good RV-8s using 20 for the pitch sensitivity setting. How does your airplane respond to that particular setting? Also, if you don't have EFIS datalogging on, please flip it on at 1 the second interval setting, and the record at boot set to yes, so that we can look at what your aircraft is doing as we try figure out what's different about your setup.
Also, though the forum is a great place for discussion, deep technical support is best done by giving us a call at 425-402-0433. We can make a lot more headway, and also get you to the right people (the autopilot engineers, who do not directly staff this forum), to help us understand where we need to improve.
Our overall goal is to get any many aircraft flying flawlessly as we can. Whether that involves more settings/knobs to adjust, we can't say at the moment. But I hope our history for working with customers to improve our products is enough to convince you that we'll do the right thing, and where we can't, we'll make it right with a refund if it comes to that.
One thing I can't stress enough is that we need YOUR help (people that aren't completely happy) to move forward. So please, anyone that is having autopilot issues, call 425-402-0433 to get into the technical support loop.
DBRV10
Active Member
Well I have to say that once we mastered the HS34 and AP74 and set up the settings, the system works very well indeed in our RV-10.
Of course, you guessed what my RV-10 partner complained about having been a B744 captain......... no VNAV.
So there you go, bloody marvellous system.....just needs the AP76!
Thank you Dynon for a superb product.
DB
Of course, you guessed what my RV-10 partner complained about having been a B744 captain......... no VNAV.
So there you go, bloody marvellous system.....just needs the AP76!
Thank you Dynon for a superb product.
DB
jakej
Well-Known Member
Now you can take it out of simulator mode - go fly
Jake J
Jake J
Dynon Support,
I'll copy what you wrote me and try doing that tomorrow. I'll also save the phone # and call with my findings. I flew to northern Michigan this last weekend and was able to further experiment with settings. If I use more than 5 for the roll servo, the aircraft rocks continuously back and forth in roll. My altitude was varying by as much as 60 feet each way in smooth air with a pitch sensitivity of 12. I increased it to 15 on the way home today and it did a little better - 30 feet each way more abruptly (in smooth air), but still overcorrects for altitude deviations. I haven't tried a pitch sensitivity of 20 since you fixed my servos (shear screw mod), so I'll see how that works. Roll performance is relatively good in NAV or TRK - not so good in heading - it wanders around quite a bit, this is in smooth air. In turbulence the ride gets pretty wild in both axes. There are at least 10 other RV-8's locally that we fly with frequently and only one other one has the Dynon autopilot - Jon Thocker - and his performance is pretty much the same as mine. I don't plan on flying this airplane IFR, so I'm not really upset, except to say that I wish it was more usable and I think it can be accomplished. Unfortunately it will take some time because I just don't have enough time to devote to trouble-shooting this problem every day. I'll work on it when I can, report to you at Dynon Support (via the phone), and hopefully we can figure something out eventually.
Scott
I'll copy what you wrote me and try doing that tomorrow. I'll also save the phone # and call with my findings. I flew to northern Michigan this last weekend and was able to further experiment with settings. If I use more than 5 for the roll servo, the aircraft rocks continuously back and forth in roll. My altitude was varying by as much as 60 feet each way in smooth air with a pitch sensitivity of 12. I increased it to 15 on the way home today and it did a little better - 30 feet each way more abruptly (in smooth air), but still overcorrects for altitude deviations. I haven't tried a pitch sensitivity of 20 since you fixed my servos (shear screw mod), so I'll see how that works. Roll performance is relatively good in NAV or TRK - not so good in heading - it wanders around quite a bit, this is in smooth air. In turbulence the ride gets pretty wild in both axes. There are at least 10 other RV-8's locally that we fly with frequently and only one other one has the Dynon autopilot - Jon Thocker - and his performance is pretty much the same as mine. I don't plan on flying this airplane IFR, so I'm not really upset, except to say that I wish it was more usable and I think it can be accomplished. Unfortunately it will take some time because I just don't have enough time to devote to trouble-shooting this problem every day. I'll work on it when I can, report to you at Dynon Support (via the phone), and hopefully we can figure something out eventually.
Scott
Well, I tried a new higher sensitivity setting as suggested and there was a small improvement. Yesterday I tried the max setting, which was terrible originally before the servos were modified. At 25 in smooth air, the performance is quite good. Just a little variation in altitude (+- 15 feet). I haven't been able to try it in turbulence, but I cautiously optomistic. Roll even was pretty good. I'll download data and report settings as requested by Lawrence and I'll find some turbulence so you get a good data feed, but for those of you that are having difficulty with stabilized flight, a high pitch sensitivity in an RV might work for you. I'm still trying to find the sweet spot in roll, particularly in turbulence, but pitch seems much better.
Scott
Scott
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2005
- Messages
- 13,226
Hi all,
We're for folks that have autopilots installed and flying, particularly D10/D100 series customers, who are running the latest firmware (5.3 currently), and have tried everything they can to dial in the autopilot - particularly in pitch - but aren't quite seeing the performance they would like. If this is you and:
-you're fairly technical - you understand how to use the Dynon Support Program to load firmware into your unit and you're comfortable with that process
-you're available to fly and iterate firmware and report back at least a few times over the coming weeks and months
-you're patient and fault-tolerant, and understand that testing "beta" firmware is an experimental thing
...then we want to hear from you. Please email betatest at dynonavionics dot com with the following information:
-airplane type
-dynon equipment, particularly, which servos you have
-roll axis setup:
servo type
short description of mounting method
all settings from the roll axis page in the ap setup menu
your performance notes/issues (in turbulence and smooth air if they're different)
what you've done so far (settings tweaked, results,etc) to try to dial it in
-pitch axis setup:
servo type
short description of mounting method
all settings from the roll axis page in the ap setup menu
your performance notes/issues (in turbulence and smooth air if they're different)
what you've done so far (settings tweaked, results,etc) to try to dial it in
Thanks!
We're for folks that have autopilots installed and flying, particularly D10/D100 series customers, who are running the latest firmware (5.3 currently), and have tried everything they can to dial in the autopilot - particularly in pitch - but aren't quite seeing the performance they would like. If this is you and:
-you're fairly technical - you understand how to use the Dynon Support Program to load firmware into your unit and you're comfortable with that process
-you're available to fly and iterate firmware and report back at least a few times over the coming weeks and months
-you're patient and fault-tolerant, and understand that testing "beta" firmware is an experimental thing
...then we want to hear from you. Please email betatest at dynonavionics dot com with the following information:
-airplane type
-dynon equipment, particularly, which servos you have
-roll axis setup:
servo type
short description of mounting method
all settings from the roll axis page in the ap setup menu
your performance notes/issues (in turbulence and smooth air if they're different)
what you've done so far (settings tweaked, results,etc) to try to dial it in
-pitch axis setup:
servo type
short description of mounting method
all settings from the roll axis page in the ap setup menu
your performance notes/issues (in turbulence and smooth air if they're different)
what you've done so far (settings tweaked, results,etc) to try to dial it in
Thanks!
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2005
- Messages
- 13,226
Hi Jack,
We do have you in the candidates pile, but aren't quite as ready as we initially thought we were for you. Thanks for volunteering and for your patience!
We do have you in the candidates pile, but aren't quite as ready as we initially thought we were for you. Thanks for volunteering and for your patience!