Should we switch from TruTrak?

nwetter

I love flying!
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
14
Our TruTrak Digiflight has not worked since we took delivery of the aircraft, so we do not have a good feel for how much we like it. It appears we will need a new head unit, which would probably mean an upgrade to their Vizion.

We have not been very happy from our dealings with TT, and the Skyview has a superior set of features, so we are considering dropping TT and buying Dynon servos. I'm not sure what our timeline would be on getting a Skyview panel, but until then we would use our D10-A.

My first question is how well does the autopilot perform compared to the TT? That is more difficult to judge online than feature set.

My other question is what functionality can we get from our D10-A and 430W without any additional modules? The documentation seems a bit vague. I know we won't get GPSS, but will we at least be able to follow a track?
 

Dynon

Dynon Staff
Staff member
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Jan 14, 2013
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14,217
Location
Woodinville, WA
You'll be able to follow GPS ground track of your choosing and the GPS side of the flight plan via the serial output from the 430W. It's not technically GPS steering, but it'll follow the magenta line.
 

breister

I love flying!
Joined
Apr 6, 2018
Messages
20
You can return the Digiflight control head to TT and they should be able to fix it cheaper than buying a new one.  As the Dynon tech said, with the D10a you would only get serial steering - so you will generally overshoot turns and zigzag a bit on track.  Most people have had good service from TT, but it's been several years since I owned one of their products.

Depending on which Digiflight model you have, the VSGV model may also fly the glideslope portion of a GPS precision approach.  Or, you can put it in "course" mode for the final approach and manually tweak heading and descent rate to "sort of" fly an ILS - something I don't think the D10 will do but my info could be outdated there.  It also had an "undocumented feature" - you could hook it to both your 430W (ARINC) and a portable like a 496 (serial).  It would automatically choose the 430/ARINC signal if available, but if that unit failed and you had cross-filled the flight path to the handheld you could re-select "track" if that happened and it would then fly from the handheld/serial connection.

The Skyview is a whole different animal than the D-10 (or D-180, which I had).  If you are not planning to upgrade the EFIS, I would recommend either fixing the current control head or heading to the forum "for sale" sections (Vans Airforce probably has the largest community of experimental flyers) and buy one used from someone who upgraded to Skyview.  Used Digiflights are not very expensive these days.  However, if you are already planning to upgrade to Skyview a pair of servos may be cheaper - they have the same form factor as the TT so can plug right in.

I really liked the ability of the TT to let you just dial in a heading and rate of climb. Skyview has that too now, but again if you aren't upgrading your EFIS my advice would be to keep the extra functionality. You can always sell it on one of the forums someday if you do upgrade!
 
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