Tim(at)MyRV10.com
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 Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:56 pm Post subject: Chelton AHRS recall viewpoint |
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I thought I'd give my own customer side viewpoint regarding the
Chelton AHRS recall. Being a flying customer with the Chelton
system, I of course had an interest in the outcome from day one,
and now that information is public it's nice to be able to
talk about it a bit more.
Just so people who may not have paid attention know, the issue is
with the AHRS itself, made by Crossbow. Chelton has sold quite
a few of these units, but from the sound of it, they aren't really
that old. The 425EX has gone out to many customers. I'm not
sure of the numbers, but I'm sure it's in the many many tens,
or maybe near 100. There are other Crossbow units that are not
necessarily affected, such as the certified unit. From my flying
perspective of the AHRS, and from some of the benefits that the
425EX had, it was a very nice AHRS overall. Except, it suffers
from some sort of power related problem that causes it to not
always boot up. Even in my limited flying (just under 25 hours),
I've had the experience of it not booting on one flight. After
resetting it a couple times, it came to life. It never failed in
the air to this point, but that doesn't give me tons of confidence
in iteself. Performance wise, the 425EX was supposed to be superior
to the certified unit, because over time the experimental units were
able to be improved, but certification, well, kind of kills innovation.
Had it not been for this power problem, I'm sure the AHRS would have
served well for the builders. In my installation I found no
magnetic effects, it tracks perfect heading with my GNS480, and
everything seems to work very well, even in heavier banking
and quick pitch and roll changes.
With the AHRS problem, Chelton knew they were going to lose customer
trust in the entire system if the heart of the heading/attitude
info was compromised. We're building 4 place planes too, so we're
not just pilots risking their own lives. Families will fly in
these planes. So they wanted complete reliability. Apparently,
and here is where I start to lose more detail quickly, they found
another manufacturer that they worked with and got a far superior
AHRS. From what I understand, from a performance and reliability
standpoint, this new GADAHRS should be on par with carrier-class
systems from a reliability and performance stanpoint. I first read
some words leading to some of the benefits in Kitplanes a couple
months ago. The article messed up and said it was made by
Electronics Intl., which was incorrect...I think they were referring
to the new EIS that integrates with Chelton...if you want to spend
the $$$ on it. At any rate, I heard it there first. I kind of
wondered what would happen with mine. It sounded like the new one
would be superior in most ways, and I thought I'd be stuck with the
old. Then I relaxed and thought that as long as they fixed the
power problem, they still had a great AHRS, probably better than
what you'd find in most other EFIS systems. After a little while,
I got to speak with D2AV and learn a little about what they thought
of the new AHRS, and it sure sounds like it's got some phenomenal
performance. It also uses a remote magnetometer so that if you
want to mount the AHRS on the CG centerpoint or somewhere
convenient, you can, and move the magnetometer to some other location
away from magnetic disturbances. It has it's own Air data in it,
so you add a pitot and static line to it. It's supposed to be
self-leveling, so there's no need to worry about mounting location
tolerances and such. All in all, if it does anywhere near as well
as it sounds, it's going to be a great thing.
More recently, I got to speak with them again and heard that they
were planning to pull back all of the old Crossbow units....which
of course we all expected would be repaired. But then they added
that they would be sending the customers the new AHRS. I don't
have any idea of the actual total cost of the new unit, but from
conversations I've had, it sounds like it's well over $10K per
unit. Nice that they're willing to replace them even with that
price tag. Given the number of units sold, that makes it in the
neighborhood of $1,000,000 that they're eating to ensure they
have happy, and safe customers. The way I see it, any product could
be found to have an issue. What really matters is how it's dealt
with. We're "experimental", so we can't expect things to always
be 100%, but in the case of the AHRS, I can tell that's what they're
shooting for. It's probably a case of covering their a$$, but
since they're trying to protect mine too by replacing it, it earns
a few points. I'm not sure how many companies would be willing
to do all that.
I've spoken in the past about Chelton stuff as I was researching it.
You should know that I paid for my units like anyone else, and I have
no interest in promotion, but I'm duly impressed, especially after
flying behind it. The EFIS transition is going very well for me.
There are disappointments so far.....the GNS480 integration basically
isn't. That may change as the programmers get time. Currently
I'm working through why my TIS traffic display isn't being
passed on. One way or the other, the traffic will be made to work.
The GNS480 I *thought* was a big deal, but now that I'm flying
with what I have, I actually think I'm ok with non-integration.
It's now a totally separate backup, since it forced me to buy
a nice Mid-Continent MD200-306 CDI, which after calibration works
extremely well. The auto-tuning would be nice, but I'm finding
that I'm only using COM1 anyway...COM2 (the GNS480) is relegated
to picking up my AWOS so far. The EIS integration is very
nice. The response rate is super on both the EIS data and the
attitude data. The display is very readable in even bright light,
and the resolution is just what I wanted. If it only had digital
Jepp charts built it....oh well, there's always SOMETHING more. 
So anyway, I know I've gotten a couple emails from people wondering
if I was disappointed with the problems. No, not right now. In
a couple months I'll be flying IFR with it...would be nice to do
some enroute IFR on the way to Sun-N-Fun. Right now though, I
need more time with the unit so I'm not too disappointed. I think
they'll be targeting their flying customers for the new units first,
which would only be fair (of course I'd say that) for delivery
of the new GADAHRS. Once they get me mine, I plan to take a day
off from work and do an immediate swap. Having spent some
time behind my original system, I'll give some immediate feedback
on it. I would have spread a bit of news earlier, but when a
company like Chelton needs to deal with vendors and contracts and
customers, past, present, and future, it doesn't always do them
good to get rumors that may or may not turn out to be true out
in public. So, I just let it move forward hoping that it would
turn out OK for all of us. Sounds like it will.
Sorry so long.
Tim
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Tim Olson - RV-10 N104CD - Flying
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