Want to Fly AFS 5000, HXr, G3X

I am KHXF based and would like to fly behind these 3 systems.

Anyone close by or willing to come here for gas and lunch, or host me if I come to you.

I want to fly a few approaches, check out the flight director and autopilot, and in general see what kind of feel there is to programming the units.

Is this where the line is forming. If so, I am next.

Bump

Bump

Still looking to fly.

Have you tried talking to each of the vendors? Most can make recommendations of who might be nearby and willing to give you a demo.

If you every get to the central Ohio area, there are several of us with AFS panels.

Feel free to stop in and you can see a customer Garmin suite.

I've installed and flown behind every combo you can imagine and.....

My pick in order of functionality is:

1-Garmin
2-Grand Rapids
3-Advanced Flight Systems
4-Dynon

My pick in order of customer service is:

1-Grand Rapids
2-Garmin
3-Dynon
4-Advanced Flight Systems

As you can see Garmin and Grand Rapids is at the top of my list. But you are doing the right thing to investigate all aspects as I have.

Good Luck!

rleffler said:

Have you tried talking to each of the vendors? Most can make recommendations of who might be nearby and willing to give you a demo.

If you every get to the central Ohio area, there are several of us with AFS panels.

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There should be a number of opportunities to test fly the AF-5000 systems.

1. Geoff Combs in Ohio has dual AF-5500 screens in his RV-10. Geoff's RV-10 really amazing, it is the nicest RV-10 that I have ever seen.

2. Alex De Dominicis at RVTraining.com has dual AF-5600 screens in his RV-10. Alex is located in Dallas and does a lot of RV flight training. Alex's new RV-14 for flight training will have the new AF-5800T touch screens and should be available later this year.

3. Almost all of the Glasair Sportsman TWTT aircraft have AFS screens. Glasair switched from the AF-4500 to the new AF-5000 screens last summer so any aircraft built since then should have them.

4. Searey Aircraft. All of the new certified Searey planes have the AF-5000 screens. Searey does demo flights and the factory planes have the screens.

5. Kitfox Aircraft. All of the new certified Kitfox planes have the AF-5000 screens.

6. We will have our RV-10 at Oshkosh with the new Touch screens available for demo flights.

7. Fly out to Portland and fly our RV-10 and visit Van's at the same time.

Rob Hickman
Advanced Flight Systems

The truth is they are all good systems, which is why everyone is so certain they made the right choice, whatever it was! Full disclosure: I have an HX/HS combo, and it was the right choice for me(!) Some of my not so scientific reasons:
I don't like paying database subscription fees.
I wanted two screens
I couldn't fit two large screens (see next item)
I wanted the boxes to fit without cutting support ribs.
I like the engine instruments in their own box (so they can be on at engine start)

Don't forget the little things. I lucked out, but I realized after the fact that one of the lower cost boxes I was considering did not have enough serial inputs/outputs to support my avionics (it's surprising how fast you can use them up).

While I admit that we may not all have similiar customer support experiences, I'll felt I had to share my AFS experience due to the post above. YMMV

I was working late on a Saturday after dinner in my hanger updating data, maps, and configs on my panel. This was my first power up of the entire panel. When all of a sudden I had one of my three AFS screen goes fubar.

Since this was during SnF and it was a Saturday night, I fired off a email describing the situation and not expecting a response because I expected everyone to be busy at SnF.

A few minutes later, my cell phone and Ken Chard from AFS is calling. This is a Saturday evening and Ken is at SnF. He asks me a few questions and asks me to send him some debug output. I comply and I get a follow up email in the morning asking me if I removed the SD card while the EFIS was on. I did and he shared with me that the 4500 series was sensitive to having the SD card being removed while turned on, but they have fixed that issue with the 5000 series. Also, since my EFIS returned to normal we assumed that was the root cause of my issue. I learned later that they were just breaking from dinner. Ken was also with Rob & Jenny Hickman, Van and several Van's employees, and Geoff Combs. With that crowd, I could have got any questions answered. But Ken didn't have to give me a call, but the fact that he did speaks volumes about customer support.

I have also ask Rob several questions and on multiple occassions, his response is call me when you are sitting in the cockpit and while walk through your settings. He has also given out his cell phone on occassion to reach him during the weekend, when he knows most of us do our work.

I needed some connectors last week and asked Jenny to ship me some. I was going to give her my credit card to pay for the parts and shipping. She responded with don't worry about it, we'll take care of it.

Understanding that others may have different and/or similiar experiences with other vendors. But I can clearly state that I've received nothing but outstanding service from Rob and his team at AFS.

bob

AFS customer service

I agree with Bob 100 %
Not flying yet but.....when we were making our purchasing decision two of the four vendors mentioned here would not return calls on technical sales questions. AFS support has been outstanding before and AFTER the sale and we have reached tech support multiple times after 5pm and Saturdays. We also recognized who has developed this experimental technology early on in the game and we feel our support is due to those that provided the innovation and technology for us the enjoy.
All these products are worthless without support but for us, Advanced Flight out performed their competition.
We recently had a RV10 builder fly us and display the capabilities of the AFS system and we were fascinated (Thanks again Bryan). I had no idea how much detail and capabilities were built into the AFS system.
Fly in a aircraft with these systems installed and a pilot who knows their capabilities( this is very important)....then call the vendors and test what customer service you will receive....the decision will be easy!

#3

Bought our RV-10 so I didn't even really buy anything directly from AFS except to upgrade a 3500 to 4500s with an upgrade discount. Rob and his crew have always been helpful. Hard to believe the.

It wonderful to see folks hopping on the bandwagon to support their favorite vendors, great to hear about your experiences . The downside is we rarely hear from the many folks with opposing views .

All vendors included.

The good news is that we have many good products to choose from and many vendors that want to please .

Happy building !!

rv6rick said:

It wonderful to see folks hopping on the bandwagon to support their favorite vendors, great to hear about your experiences . The downside is we rarely hear from the many folks with opposing views .

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I think you're on to something Rick. I am building an RV with GRT and have upgraded once along the way. I also am flying an RV with a Dynon. I've dealt with GRT a lot more than Dynon so that may affect the comparison.

Dynon has been very responsive, answering questions and confirming or correcting my understanding of their D-100 unit.

GRT has been adequate at responding to questions. I can count on never getting a phone call returned (days go by w/o a return call and I don't mean during Oshkosh or SnF), which irritates me (note: I have not called within the past 9 months and I know they've added staff). When I do get someone on the phone, I get all the time needed to answer questions completely. They're nice people, too.

From what I can tell of the products, the D-100 is an excellent no-frills EFIS. My expectation is the Horizon HX is going to blow it away in terms of performance and features (and for the cost difference it should).

I've owned a few Garmin handhelds and I been serviced by Garmin. Let me just say, I'm gritting my teeth as I put a Garmin stack in the RV I'm building. If there was a reasonable IFR option, I would have taken it.

So here's my rating.

Functionality

1. GRT
2. Garmin
3. Dynon

Customer service

1. Dynon
2. nobody
3. GRT
75. Garmin

Don said:

I think you're on to something Rick. I am building an RV with GRT and have upgraded once along the way. I also am flying an RV with a Dynon. I've dealt with GRT a lot more than Dynon so that may affect the comparison.

Dynon has been very responsive, answering questions and confirming or correcting my understanding of their D-100 unit.

GRT has been adequate at responding to questions. I can count on never getting a phone call returned (days go by w/o a return call and I don't mean during Oshkosh or SnF), which irritates me (note: I have not called within the past 9 months and I know they've added staff). When I do get someone on the phone, I get all the time needed to answer questions completely. They're nice people, too.

From what I can tell of the products, the D-100 is an excellent no-frills EFIS. My expectation is the Horizon HX is going to blow it away in terms of performance and features (and for the cost difference it should).

I've owned a few Garmin handhelds and I been serviced by Garmin. Let me just say, I'm gritting my teeth as I put a Garmin stack in the RV I'm building. If there was a reasonable IFR option, I would have taken it.

So here's my rating.

Functionality

1. GRT
2. Garmin
3. Dynon

Customer service

1. Dynon
2. nobody
3. GRT
75. Garmin

Click to expand...

I have flown behind Dynon and GRT both and concur completely regarding GRT superior performance/functions.

Every company except Garmin sells more than one product line, so saying "company X has more features than company Y" is like saying "A Chrysler is faster than a Ferrari". Which is true for certain combinations...

If you want to discuss features productively, you at least need to discuss the specific models you are comparing. Even more, you need to include at least an approximate date you did the comparisons, since all companies are constantly adding features and a comparison done a year apart is very likely to favor the EFIS you experience last.

--Ian Jordan
Dynon Avionics

Ian is right on...AND...this thread has crept a LOOOOONG way from what the OP was asking. As Rick stated and I've noted dozens of times, we already know the folks predominantly will be inclined to promote the choice they made, which is great. But, as Ian also noted it's usually based on certain products at certain times based on each persons set of certain circumstances.

In this case I'm fairly confident the OP is not having problems choosing a system and has for the most part made up his mind. At my urging I encouraged him to go fly behind the systems...hence his original question asking if he could go FLY behind it; not "what should I buy". I'm not taking anything away from anyone here in this thread, but in this case it's just not what is needed in this specific thread, nor will it likely help out this specific customer with his original question.

Cheers,
Stein

Great input

Very hard not to give a unbiased opinion here...but many of our purchases involve a new or continuing relationships with great vendors. The nerve was struck on my part when my preferred vendor was rated 4th in customer service.....I apologize for the rant.

More importantly to the original question from the OP who knows his next step in the process. He probably has done what I did and demoed all the different options from desktop models. This gives you a basic idea and gets you all excited....He is asking to fly in existing aircraft with this technology and that is where the story will be told and the excitment reaches a whole new level. If he has a top notch pilot who knows the capabilities of the system, he will be able to make a decision with all due diligence done. I highly recommend that anyone that is reaching this point , do exactly what this Op is going to do. Those demo flights will modivate and accelerate you on your project and after one of those flights, you will become a impulse buyer Just remember, a outstanding pilot is key to displaying these products. Also, as I have heard Bob mention before, defining your mission is important to be able to compare products and their features.
Enough said on my part as I am still the baby of this family and learning everyday.

Bump

Any one ??

Come to St. Louis and I would be happy to demo the Garmin 3 screen system for you

Come to San Francisco (KLVK) and I'll be happy to demo the GRT HX and HS for you.

If you are in Seattle I would be happy to demonstrate the 5600 to you.

Back to the EFIS comparison

There's been some thread drift and I'm guilty of contributing to it. So to get back on target, I'd like to hear from the OP (and others) after he (or they) have flown behind the different EFISs. I realize it's probably subjective in many respects but there ought to be some solid objective observations, too.

My decision is made for the airplane I'm building but if I upgrade the 9 I'm flying, I'm open to substantiated suggestions. I realize the mission is important too, but there's something to be learned that could apply to many missions.