Stubby wrote:

Scott Moore wrote:

Mitty wrote:


Our club is looking at upgrading a couple of airplanes to Garmin 430s, etc.

It seems to me that standby vacuum would be a good thing to add, too.

1) Good idea? Do these systems really work?

2) Recommendations on type/brand/model?

TIA


Electric attitude. Vacuum pumps are going away.


But, can't an electric attitude indicator fail? Bearings wear out.
I've suffered that on a hard disk. Are there any MTBF numbers for the
two systems?

I have heard that EAIs have better fail numbers than vac, but sure, its
nonzero.

The reason why all electric panels are becoming common is because
electrical systems are more reliable than vacuum, and backup is easier to
provide for everything, a second battery. It also makes more sense to
unify around a single system, instead of having a hodge-podge of two
different systems.

I would go all electric and remove my vac pump, but I blew it and
got an NSD-360. The first repair bill for that utter piece of defective
junk easily pushed the total cost above what an all electric solution
would have cost (i.e., $5000 for the NSD360, and $4000 to get it to
work correctly).