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The Avidyne DFC90: Another Big Step for Increasing Safety
and Utility
Last week was very exciting for Avidyne with the
announcements we made at AOPA. We have continued to focus on our
customers’ needs and adapting our products for the current market conditions.
We made announcements about our http://www.avidyne.com/products/ex600/index.asp - The DFC90 project is important to us for many reasons:
first, it allows us to create a continuum of upgrade possibilities for all of
our customers in a wide range of price points. Second, it is going to
provide a lot of value to our customers with a relatively low investment of
money and time. Third, we are going to increase safety and utility for
our customer base.
You can get all the details on the DFC90 by clicking the
link above to our press release. I wanted to share with you my personal
experience flying with the DFC90 over the past month. I don’t have much
time flying in a Cirrus and even less time flying with the 55x engaged, but I
have heard from a lot of our customers that they would like more out of their
autopilot. The DFC90 and DFC100 will absolutely provide that to our
customers, and we should have some PIREPS from non-Avidyne employees in the
coming weeks.
As a 100-hour pilot, I can appreciate the “Straight-and-Level”
functionality and the envelope protection capabilities. I flew with Steve
Jacobson, VP of Product Management, last week, and he put the DFC90 through the
demonstration profile. We did unusual attitude tests of 30⁰ pitch up /
down and 60 degrees of bank. With the push of a button the aircraft
smoothly regained controlled flight quickly and efficiently. He then
demonstrated our Envelope Protection functionality where we commanded a VS
climb rate of 500 FPM and we pulled back power. The PFD annunciated that
we were in an “Underspeed” situation, and the aircraft gently reduced the climb
rate, adjusting VS in concert with the ability for the aircraft to climb. When
a climb was no longer possible and the airspeed dropped it sacrificed altitude
for airspeed and kept us well above a stall and we eventually started to
descend. This feature provides a tremendous level of safety for our turbo-equipped
pilots that are in the flight levels. There have been some unfortunate
fatalities caused by hypoxia that our envelope protection could have
prevented. In a situation where the pilot is incapacitated due to hypoxia
the one tank would run out of fuel, the engine would stop, envelope protection
would prioritize airspeed over altitude hold, and the plane would start a
descent. If someone was at FL250 it would take about 11 minutes to
descend to 14,000 feet and hopefully the pilot would start to regain
consciousness. They would then have another 10+ minutes to either restart
the engine using the other tank of fuel or pull the chute. I think this
can be a game changer for those of you with turbo-equipped aircraft that want
another layer of safety and redundancy when trying to get more utility from the
aircraft in the flight levels.
The other aspect of this program that is exciting is the
ease with which someone can upgrade to the DFC90. First, it requires a
hardware and software mod to the PFD. In order to decrease downtime, we
will do this upgrade using our advanced-exchange system, so the PFD swap can be
done in a couple of hours. Once the PFD 8.0 is in the airplane, the
upgrade is as simple as removing the 55x control head with an allen wrench and
then replacing it with the DFC90 control head. During our test flight
last week it took us 90 seconds to swap control heads and get the full system
up and running in between ILS landings on runway 29 at KBED. That
was impressive and proved to me that this can be an easy upgrade for our
Entegra customers.
I will get one of the more experienced pilots to
post about the overall performance of the DFC90, but for this 100-hour pilot I
am sold!
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