Arnav engine monitoring questions, answers

Guest Discussion
1

I’ve got my engine monitoring working, and I’ve got a question or two:

  1. The instruction manual says nothing about the system’s capabilities when leaning. In other systems, like Insight’s GEM, there are provisions to facilitate peaking out EGT. How about the Arnav? I’m simply using the large engine display, and watching temps. I note that one cylinder has a blue square next to it. What is that telling me? Is there a shortcut when leaning?

  2. Any other interesting things that anyone has discovered that is not included in the instruction manual.

  3. When I updated software with the engine monitoring installation, my stormscope display changed. Now, there is always a yellow 25 mile circle when the system is on, no matter what the range.

This is new–my older stormscope/arnav software did not have this display. I was concerned that I still was receiving stormscope info outside the circle. A phone call to arnav comfirmed this, as did my own observation.

No mention of this circle in the instruction book.

  1. Now that the left side of my screen is covered by the engine display, what happens when the stormscope has an error? Where does the error message appear? Does it overide the engine display, or will it show up elsewhere?
2

David,

I actually found the “review” by Delmar Fadden and Peter Morton to be a lot more useful than the POH supplement provided by Arnav. I think that review is posted both on this site (under Stories) and on Arnav’s site (from the main page).

It still doesn’t answer some of your questions, but seems to be better than the Arnav documentation.

I’ll try to answer some of your questions with what I’ve noticed in flying with the system, but of course keep in mind that what I’m saying here might be wrong, it’s just what I’ve guessed at…

I’ve got my engine monitoring working, and I’ve got a question or two:

  1. The instruction manual says nothing about the system’s capabilities when leaning. In other systems, like Insight’s GEM, there are provisions to facilitate peaking out EGT. How about the Arnav? I’m simply using the large engine display, and watching temps. I note that one cylinder has a blue square next to it. What is that telling me? Is there a shortcut when leaning?

To lean, you’ll want to go to the full-screen engine mode, hit “PEAK”, then either leave it on that screen or else go to the (map + temps) screen.

The blue square goes around the cylinder number which peaks first. I think this info is from the “review”, but I’m not sure. The blue bar that extends down shows how much cooler than peak each cylinder is; the bar turns to yellow when 50 degrees cooler than peak. [Note I didn’t say leaner than peak or richer than peak, just cooler than peak.]

  1. Now that the left side of my screen is covered by the engine display, what happens when the stormscope has an error? Where does the error message appear? Does it overide the engine display, or will it show up elsewhere?

The “review” states that a small yellow & red checkerboard pattern appears on the menu softkey whenever the stormscope detects activity, whether or not it’s enabled.

However, I have noticed that this square was NOT present when the stormscope was not connected properly, and IS present now that the stormscope is connected properly, regardless of whether any strikes are detected.

In other words, if you see the red/yellow checkerboard, it seems to indicate that the stormscope is communicating properly with the Arnav, and doesn’t necessarily indicate that there are any strikes present.

Again, this contradicts what the “review” stated, so maybe I’m mistaken but it’s what I’ve noticed.

Steve

P.S. I second your other message to Arnav – of course we want all want them to succeed. If for no other reason, at least so that we don’t have a large, expensive orphan in our panels! The lack of documentation with the engine monitoring product is something that needs to be (and I believe will be) fixed in short order.

On the other hand, they must realize that with this type of limited documentation, it is only natural for owners such as us to be using a forum such as this to discuss observations noted while using the system…