On Friday, January 3, 2020 at 6:55:38 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
jfitch wrote on 1/2/2020 5:46 PM:
On Wednesday, January 1, 2020 at 5:17:06 PM UTC-8, wrote:
Anyone have experience using the air avionics AIR control display with altimeter key and remote Becker 6201?

Is the ACD "friendly" to manage radio functions?

I have the ACD on a Becker (no altitude key). It is a *great* way to control the radio, better than the Becker front end. If you also use the altimeter functions on the same head, you lose some screen area to it and in my opinion some useful functionality. This is shown well enough in Air's documentation.

I'll take the opportunity to point out that you need not have a remote Becker to do this (for some reason at least here in the USA the remote costs more). Just unscrew the face from the Becker, unplug the front panel, throw it in a drawer, and plug in the ACD. It may be wise to make a cover for the open holes in the front of the Becker chassis. That is what I did - there is no difference between that and a remote Becker.

What makes it *great*? Do you use the ACD for any other purpose?

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

Access to channels: Channels can be labeled with an actual alpha name, this appears on the display for both primary and secondary channels (secondary is lost if you use the Alt function). There is a most recently used buffer to select channels (again in English, not code). There is also a GPS referenced database automatically giving you all channels nearby (again in English). All revelant channels near my home airport I have labelled with their proper names (TRK TOWER, ATIS, NORCAL APP, GlIDER.3 etc.). When I am far from my home airport, I can access the geo referenced list and find the channel I want. I never have to look at a chart to find a frequency. Since access to channels is the main function of the radio, this is important. As I said I have the Becker front end and played with that a little before removing it. The ACD is substantially better.

The reason I purchased it was in anticipation of the Air Avionics radio, which is proving to be Vaporware. The great thing about that radio (if it ever ships) is the Say Again function which stores the last several received transmissions. I am quite happy with how it works in combination with the Becker though.

I do not use the ACD for any other purpose. If it were US legal, I might use a second one to combine altimeter and transponder functions, but there is no US approval for that. Air Avionics would surely do a better job on UI than Trig based on every product sold by each company.