Curtis: Agree. See my post with the quote from Aviation Consumer on this. The Avidyne, I believe, runs a Pentium 166, which would seem pretty slow, but it has a fairly limited amount of code to load. I got the impression from Aviation Consumer that an “orderly shutdown” was required, but no indication that it was lengthly. After all, it is a computer, and you cant just pull the plug to shut it down.
I was concerned about the shut down procedure for Avidyne expressed in this and other posts. Cirrus referred me to Tom Harper at Avidyne who said that this was true of their older units, but shortly after the Aviation Consumer article was written, they upgraded the system such that no special shut down procedures are required. I specifically asked if I could just switch off the avionics master switch without doing anything with the Avidyne unit and he said “yes”. He was very specific that this is not an issue, and he knew that I was going to put his answer on this forum.
I also asked about timing of upgrades. The answer was that it was up to Cirrus. He clearly knows there is a strong interest in engine monitoring, but was unwilling to give any information.
Orderly shutdown is a flaw actually. I want to be able to pull the breaker on any high power load device whenever there is a situation where this might be important. I then want to be able to still use the device after that problem is cleared without having to send it back to the factory like Aviation Consumer did when theirs was corrupted during a “dirty” shutdown. Arnav wins here. Since DOS doesn’t cache files like NT there is no problem in pulling the plug during normal operation.
Derek
I am hoping the way ARNAV offers the upgrade by building a pool of, say twenty-five or so, displays with the upgraded hardware and offers them on an exchange basis to current owners for some reasonable upcharge.
I hope you are right. We will be getting delivery in early January, but I can’t getting a plane with a gaping hole in the panel waiting for a future development. I agree with the computer analogy, you need when you need it and you will never get anything, if you keep delaying to wait for the next improvement.