Chapter 22 – “Deslumpifier”

Alas, in light of the amazingly cold wx we are currently experiencing on the eastern seaboard of the United States, I’ve continued my quest to cross to-do items off my list, whether it is as banal in nature as simply ordering parts.

One such part I recently ordered was my instrument panel eyeball vent to allow me to focus heated air towards the upper part of me during cold flights.  I can tell you that right now that sounds like an especially good feature to have!  This Aveo eyeball vent was actually a bit tricky to decide which version to buy.  At first I was leaning towards anodized silver, even took a small poll.  But after getting everyones’ input and then spending a bit of time looking at both panel pics online and at my own panel, black just seemed the right way to go.  I’m sure in a week I’ll want silver again… argh!

I also received my “Deslumpifier” from electronics guru Eric Page.  He did a great job and his Voltage Slump Eliminator construction looks very professional.  It’s not too obtrusive in size and will add a great feature to my panel by allowing me to simply enter an entire flight plan into my GNS480 GPS navigator –on battery power and thus stress free regarding time (e.g. NOT sitting there burning mucho dinero in the form of 100LL)– before I then power up the engine whilst leaving the GNS480 on.  Good times!

After checking out the “Deslumpifier” I then spent well over an hour updating my engine management system and panel power electrical system diagrams, as well as creating a sheet to cleanly annotate all my current GRT EIS4000 configuration settings.

Another nice little surprise at the very beginning of 2018 was a text I received from Marco pointing out an announcement on Grand Rapid Technologies’ website.  They are now offering the special features package (EIS data display, Bluetooth and ADS-B display) for free on their Mini-X and Mini-AP EFISs.  Well, it ended up that I didn’t qualify for the “free” package, but I found out that I could get it at a greatly reduced price when I ordered my last GRT engine sensor: the Hall Affect Amp sensor.

Since I have Bluetooth and ADS-B on my HXr, I wasn’t concerned about those displaying on my Mini-X.  However, I did really want the capability to display engine data on my Mini-X in case my HXr EFIS display died inflight, so I pulled the trigger and ordered the software.

What I didn’t realize was how well laid out the Mini-X engine data display would look (IMO). A few hours after pulling the trigger on the software, I received an email from GRT and was able to update my Mini-X to display engine data.  I have to say that I’m really pleased with how it looks (of course, again, these pics don’t do it any justice!).

Here’s a wider angle view with the checklist displayed in the lower left inset on the HXr.  I did this to simply show that if I was messing about with a checklist, or had a full screen map or approach chart displayed, that with two button clicks I can very easily bring up the Mini-X engine data screen.  So, not only is it a great backup feature to the HXr, but it clearly offers a lot of flexibility to provide flight-centric information in a variety of ways.

Tomorrow should be another electrical tasker day in that I’ll most likely be doing a lot of wire & component labeling, and attempting to finish up so much of the small electrical items on my to-do list, nearly all of which are currently panel-related.

 

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