Dynon Support,
As a hardware/software developer with over 20 years experience, I find it hard to believe that this is so difficult. Your documentation states that the GX60 is "known to work" over the serial bus (D10A Installation Manual, page 3-5). If you're already reading some data off the serial bus, why can't you read these few additional bytes? You must already be parsing this data just so you can ignore it.
Now my upgrade path is "simply" this:
- Replace my perfectly functional GX60 (enroute and approach certified, fully integrated with the avionics stack including MX20 moving map, etc.) with at least a Garmin 430: $8000
- Buy two servos, an HS34, and an AP74: $2600
This gives me the same capabilities I have today plus vertical rate and preset. No vertical NAV, coupled approaches, vertical GPS, etc. (yes, I wanted the AP76!). All for the bargain price of $10,600 plus installation.
Then next year you want me to throw out the AP74 (and maybe the HS34) and buy NextGen, which will require another major redesign of the panel. At that point I'll finally have an autopilot that has the same capabilities that analog autopilots have had for years.
Dynon, you started out being the avionics company for the kit plane community. Your products were advertised as low cost and flexible to integrate and upgrade, which is why I selected them. I was one of your first customers with the D10, upgraded to the D10A, added the Remote Compass and Heated Pitot, looked forward to the Autopilot.
Yet I was growing concerned that you lost your initial focus. I've been watching your product announcements and reading the forum hoping you would stay the course, but that simply hasn't happened. The heated pitot took three years. The AP76 was announced then dropped. No upgrade to full IFR autopilot unless we go NextGen. Now you won't support my modern GPS.
Instrument panels are not PC's; we don't replace them every two years. I'm sure that there are at least one or two other people in the world with both your EFIS and the popular Apollo GX series GPS. You never stated that there was limited capability or that you would discontinue support for this GPS, but now we're left out in the cold.
I don't know what market you are targeting now, but I guess I'm not in it anymore.
Tell you what: since you don't seem to care much for us D10A owners who don't want to replace our panels, how about going Open Source on the firmware so we can continue to develop it ourselves?
Regards,
Glenn