Well, I got the plane back from Saint Aviation on Tuesday and I've had several flights now. To put it mildly, it's a very impressive system. Even more impressive was the fact that everything just worked when we did the test flight, the only issues were cosmetic in nature and took 5 minutes to fix...quite the testament to how detail oriented and thorough they are at the shop.
Here's a picture of the new stack, with the PS Engineering PAR200 (Audio Panel + Com) as well as the Avidyne IFD540. The PAR200 is crisp and clear and generally the sound is much improved over the previous setup. I also have some bluetooth pairing options for music now, but have not tested that yet, and I can isolate myself if my 5 year old and my wife get a little chatty at the wrong time during a flight. This would probably be particularly handy when flying IFR on an approach.
I tried to use the Avidyne training app as much as I could prior to picking the plane up and that definitely helped to familiarize myself with it, but I did find myself grabbing my phone to look up a frequency quickly since I didn't know how to get to that information as readily on the IFD, but I can already feel that going away after just a couple of flights so generally it's very intuitive. I think I could have saved a bit of money by going with the 440 instead, but I don't regret having the larger screen area at all either.
The Lynx L3 ADS-B transponder was an easy choice on this install because they had a package deal with the IFD, so I got it for much less than really most any other available ADS-B solution. The screen itself is beautiful and has sort of a 3D effect when you look at it. It takes a little bit of pressure to swipe on the screen but not so much as to be annoying. Since traffic and weather are both displayed on the HDX I didn't find myself referencing the Lynx very often in flight, but again I don't regret the purchase because of the pricing and I do generally like having the option of displaying weather and traffic in the stack.
Here's the backup EFIS and the two control panels for the HDX. I wasn't quite sure about the layout when Jesse originally sent me the picture, but I have to say that I think it's a good spot for all three of these items. The knobs and buttons are easy to get to and manipulate and the backup EFIS is easily in a primary scan location but I also never felt distracted by it. I still need to calibrate the magnetic heading on the backup EFIS so it's not currently showing the proper heading, but I may go out and do that this weekend.
And I saved the best for last: the Skyview HDX display. My phone camera doesn't do the setup justice really as the display is perfectly visible even in the brightest of sunlight. I was a little concerned about going with just the single display instead of having another display to use as an MFD, but I'm 100% happy with the single display...it puts everything right in front of me and it's really a perfect size so that your scan is nice and tight while also having everything be easily readable. I really like the weather radar and traffic display, the way the data is presented is very well done. I had to stop not once, but twice on my flight back home from the shop due to weather so I really put that aspect of the system through the ringer on the 3 hour flight back.
All that said, my very favorite part of the system has to be the 3 axis auto-pilot. What a game changer this is not feeling exhausted on long flights and the yaw damper does an incredible job of stopping the "Bonanza Boogie" anytime the autopilot is engaged. You can also separately enable or disable the yaw damper as well with a button on the panel which is nice...my family loves the yaw damper. I wanted a system that would allow me to comfortably train and fly single pilot IFR and I really couldn't ask for anything more from what I've seen thus far.
Even with watching all of the Dynon and Avidyne training videos, I still feel like there's a lot more I need to study up on in regards to the system, but the basics were very easy to understand and things will only get easier from here on out I'm sure. It took me a full seven years to save up for a complete panel redo, but I'm totally wowed. I can't thank Jesse and Saint Aviation enough for making my panel dreams come true, they were really a joy to work with all the way through.
