AV-30... Is it Worth it? (Cessna 150)

hey guys it's been a while since i've done a video so but well as good a time as any to get one done during all this weather so what i want to talk to you about today is i'm going to do a little review overview and demonstration of one of the more expensive upgrades i've done with this airplane since i've owned it and that is the elimination of the vacuum system in the installation of digital attitude and directional indication so i'm going to show you what i've got here so what i did is i installed the uavionix av-30s into here and uh just talked for a minute about how that went so basically uh uavionics puts out a three inch display called the av-30 and it's been out for a couple of years the certified version came out i want to say about a year year and a half ago as far as installation goes uh went very smoothly um obviously the hardest part was actually removing the vacuum system so that required taking out the uh the vacuum pump um the line removing the bulkhead fitting capping the firewall off there the removal of the regulator the uh filter all the hoses and the directional gyro and the attitude indicator that was probably a day's worth of work right there just getting all that out that being said um the difference between the installation of the av-30s and the removal of the vacuum system i basically saved about oh boy i got to go back and look but i think it was about 15.7 pounds that i eliminated so at 15.7 pounds is kind of substantial and it would be more effective in this plane if i didn't probably put 15.7 pounds on here so i guess i'm back to square one probably put 15 pounds on here in the last few years eliminated 15 pounds so you know i'm not gonna really notice anything but having 15 pounds here and that well yeah so anyway that makes sense the removal of the vacuum system uh i don't want to get into legalities here and um possible uh interpretations of how the regulations work but basically it's a separate process to remove the vacuum system from your plane as opposed to the installation of the av-30s that said it may require another 337 form to submit for the removal of it should you go that route uh like said i'm not getting into any legality issues here you know but anyway uh so two separate things the removal of the vacuum system and the installation of the av-30s now you aren't going to be removing the vacuum system if you're just replacing one of your instruments for instance most people want to have the attitude indicator replaced which would just be removing a couple of lines and capping off a little bit of rerouting in there but you'd be leaving the vacuum pump and everything else in there to drive the directional gyro so um but if you're like me it's like i don't want the upkeep of a vacuum pump going out and a gyro going out i just did both of them what can these units do well they're jam-packed they actually have a lot going on in that little unit your primary indication you can have a attitude indication your primary direction indication it's got a probeless angle of attack indicator you can hook it up for outside air temperature it can display your density altitudes and all that other stuff in there as well now what i did on mine is i linked my ifly gps to my directional gyro alone to provide a repeater display for direction and indication the pneumatic fittings i have just going in for air speed and alter altitude information is just into the attitude indicator so this is just directional information and this is just attitude indication with uh showing your altitude and some other stuff on there pretty simple depending on your unit to hook up it's a little bit a very one wire running from your gps into there works extremely good no problems with that now let's talk for just a minute about a couple quick pros and cons pros to the system no vacuum system anymore no maintenance no filter over changes no vacuum pumps going out one less moving part i think much more precise a lot more information packed into there i think that's a big safety factor it kind of gives you a backup altimeter the angle of attack is great the price is good compared to a g5 and this unit uses your existing cutout so you don't have to cut the panel out for a square unit like the g5 or some of the other units out there this uses your existing instrument cutout so it leaves it very clean no pan panel modifications or anything of that nature another plus it eliminated the vacuum gauge so now i'm able to have my cylinder head temperature in here in place of where the vacuum gauge was so that's a plus um freed me up one more uh spot in my panel for that the repeater display from the gps that's very beneficial so you know well what good is having a repeater display from when you got the gps right there well a couple of things if you're on the gps and you're looking up airport information or you're doing something else you still have your primary direction bearings and all that other stuff indicated there so that if your gps is down for a period of time doing something else you're still following that i also like the waypoint setting on it so basically if i load up load in a flight plan of some sort it's showing that from waypoint to waypoint uh really good doing practice instrument work stuff like that drawbacks it is ifr certified for primary attitude and primary directional information only you can't use it for the repeater display aspect of it you can't use it it's not certified to use for that from your gps the that part of it is not certified for instrument use other weak link the directional gyro now i say that with a lot of uh hesitancy because there's been a lot of changes around this when this directional gyro first came out when i first started using it it was uh it was bizarre it was like there would be one flight i would go and it would hold that heading like with very little precession and then the next slide i go on i mean within 15 minutes it's 30 40 degrees precess which is worthless in my opinion i mean you just can't use that now i use it mostly with the repeater so it's kind of non-issue but when it was first coming up was when i was doing a flight review and i needed to go on to the directional gyro itself for maneuvers you know 360 turns this kind of stuff or you can't use gps for that kind of uh maneuver and that was when i was noticing you know man i'm rolling out i'm on heading according to the indicator but my nose isn't where it was and and uh so they came out with a in the first update which um i definitely i'd say it cut the problems in half um then they came out with a second update which has a new calibration setting on it and then there is also another update that uses the internal magnometer i think new units are shipping with that already fixed if you have an older unit you got to send it back in and have that hardware part done and then you get it back and you do this reset up i have not decided to send my units back in to have that done simply because i don't use it enough for that and with the first update i did with the heart with the software it will i always get some pretty stinking accurate readings so this time it felt up to it now i've done another update on both units so we're going to go out here and fly and see how it does and i'm going to get to show you the units what they look like what they do and then uh we'll take a look and see how that how that setting is performing without having to send the units back in to have it redone with the internal magnometer so i'm gonna get the plane ready we're gonna go fly all right so we're gonna go ahead and fire it up all right as you can see the displays are very very clear um so it is really windy out today in fact it's uh you know right on the edge of where you don't really want to go flying anymore so i'll adjust this down and it holds my altitude pretty good so let me check out 2 000 overcast at two thousand four hundred temperature eight celsius dew point five celsius altimeter two niner niner three inches of mercury oh there we go two nine or nine or three morristown moore mural airport okay weather observations one eight zero two zulu win two six zero at one zero not visibility more than one zero all right so yeah it's a a little windy so i'm gonna this is set turn the altimeter or the uh alternator on and you can see it displays my bus voltage which is great cylinder heads coming up there and then i'm gonna go ahead and set this so it looks like um it's around two five five magnetic because of the amount of wind today so two five five and we're just going to compare it to the magnetic compass and see how it performs all right so a couple things to note you've got all kinds of different settings in here of how you can make this thing display it's all very customizable but um i can just set it for just a normal very plain attitude indicator or the one with all my information on it but what we're gonna do is when we take off we get lined up with the runway i'm gonna put the heading bug down here exactly in front and then we're gonna fly and see how bad it is off or not off when we get back in my gps is now fired up so if i hit this this is showing this is my repeater display with crosstrack error you could customize some of that i've just got it set for track bearing and what the ground speed is um this is arc mode this is nice kind of like a little moving map shows you where you're at you could adjust the scales of it and all of that and of course i could flip over to another attitude indicator which you really don't use i'm gonna get lined up with the runway and then we're gonna set this heading bug okay right down here all right we'll see what it is so uh said uh this is a great little unit i'll talk about it a little bit more as i'm taking off and flying and here we go airspeed's alive on the indicator winds hanging pretty close down the runway ain't too bad definitely a little a little bumpy i don't want to mess with cameras too much uh during takeoff phase you can hear that that's uh well it's getting a little bit high angle of attack there mostly updraft condition there i had a big updraft so you can see there airspeed's displayed you can see the angle of attack there it's very bumpy so it is pretty instant also has a slip indicator down there battery status let's talk about it for a minute so one good thing about this unit is in the event it's got an internal battery as well so in the event of a power failure you got about 30 minutes of uh backup attitude indication so hopefully within that 30 minutes you can get out now how does that work well basically so long as it's got air speed air pressure into the unit where it detects you're flying and the unit powers down it's going to stay on battery backup now when you're on the ground and power goes off and there's no airspeed the unit can power down you can also override that uh shutdown just by pressing any button one that [Music] so we're just gonna adjust that a little bit there but we are kind of high so anyway so far i mean it looks like it's holding so we're just gonna go out here and mess around a little bit do some maneuvers we got like i said really good crosswind uh conditions so we'll see how the directional unit does with that also you could set all kinds of um audio alerts you it has audio out you can tie it into your intercom system so that you can hear alerts and you can set those alerts for different parameters for instance i will do a roll here and you'll hear the world well that's pretty that's pretty good it's the same thing with pitch check angle check angle check angle check it was showing that angle of attack coming up there into the red it also has g alerts you could set it's got an internal g-meter so yeah it's very windy today very windy very bumpy so we're just gonna go out here fly around a little bit come back in see how it's holding let me show you the uh now there's a repeater display so it's showing you know the direction it came to the airport there okay looking at the clock i think i was closer to about 45 minutes i was out kind of gallivanting around looking at uh property and stuff definitely windy no flaps today don't need that all right that was fun [Music] okay [Music] oh taking a look at this it's pretty close looks like maybe it's off uh we were at 246 is where it is at and to get it back on let's see here about it moved about eight degrees eight degrees in about 45 minutes which uh like i said it's better today was very challenging with the wind and uh being jostled around it'd probably do better on a day that it's a lot calmer but again you know i think that's the weak point on it um in my opinion if you're going to be doing ifr with it or being re be relying upon that i would make sure that i got that uh internal magnometer calibrated uh setups you know make sure that's set up from the factory because uh i think that is the weak link in the system okay so just a recap it's a big improvement it was extremely windy very bumpy like there was a there's there wasn't a moment of it sitting still so but i think that's like extreme conditions um probably be pretty close my guess is if i want to have all that but 8 degrees and 45 minutes is um it's marginal so you know workable but marginal uh other than that um after flying behind it for over a year now uh or longer with other units i'm impressed with them they're good for the price you save money using them you save a lot of installation costs using them uh the other big factor is uh customer support uavionix is a a lot younger than garmin or some of the other ones but in the early stages with uavionics especially when adsb out just came out they were they were swamped and they had some bumps lately though customer service has been great whenever i've had a question or an issue because i got a lot of you avionics stuff not just these two units they've been great to work with so i think their customer service is pretty good right now at least in at least in my experience it's been good in fact it's been so good they've sent me things as loners just to try out to see if it if it works one of the things that they came out with is what they call avelink and it's this little adapter that goes on the back side of the unit so basically your wiring harness going into the unit you unplug it plug this adapter and then plug your wiring harness and it makes your av 30 wi-fi compatible uh great for updates it can also get adsb in information to display traffic and they got a lot of other integrations with that they sent me one just to try out and see if i liked it to update my units and all that kind of stuff so you know i appreciate that again i think the biggest drawback is the directional gyro but that may be fixable with the new units that are coming out that may be a thing of the past anyway so i don't you know i want to make that the reason not to get them autopilot integration isn't there yet so if you need your directional gyro to autopilot or your attitude indicator to autopilot that's going to be a problem right now but for the little cessna 150 it's a lot of bang for your buck can't speak uh well enough of them i think it's a good thing to do if you want to bring some modern technology to your aging cockpit without spending a fortune so outside of the gps i think it's probably the best thing that you can do a lot of safety integrations a lot of information displayed a lot less maintenance and once that initial cost is out of the way uh i think you know there's so little to do with it so anyway hey thanks for for watching guys um i got more videos coming out here soon i've got a lot more reviews to do on different things i've done to the airplane some more flying i can't get over how this little itty bitty channel that i haven't put a lot of effort into is growing and i'd like to see it grow i think there's a lot of interest in these little airplanes they're one of the most accessible aircraft out there to the general public and i think they're underrated so all right well thanks again for watching we'll see you next time

Channel: Cessna 150 Pilot

Views: 24,274

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Id: LVZ3dhRoTaE

Length: 26min 2sec (1562 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022