On Sep 19, 1:08 pm, Jim Stewart wrote:
Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
Hi All,

I am a student for my private license, and during my last ground
school session, I was having discussion about how glass cockpits might
be made cheaper by using commoditized components. For example, some
GPS units cost $1000's US, but a friend of mine help found a company
that made the most advanced GPS receivers around, and those devices,
including package, barely cost $400. Simpler receives are a lot
cheaper, some as low as $50US (http://electronics.pricegrabber.com/gps-
receivers/p/2003/form_keyword=usb+gps/rd=1) I'm not sure what the
differences are in receivers, but I would imagine that a "good" GPS
unit could be had for say, $500, in which case, that, coupled with a
conventional PC and software, should be able to do anything that the
fancier (Garmin, etc) units can do. Most importantly, that one PC
could work for many instruments simultaneously, and cost difference
should be huge . [Yes, I know, reliability, FAA
certification...yada...]

I think we are already close to your request.

A Lowrance 2000c gives you terrain, airspace,
VFR chart, airports and frequencies in a very
nice little package for about 700 USD on discount.

These days, a GPS that gives you lat/long, ground
speed and heading is trivial. I can't imagine
the amount of work that must go into all the other
details of a nice aviation GPS. Plus the warm
feeling of having a Jep database in the unit.

What shocked me was the purported cost of instruments compared to what
they could cost. A USB pressure sensor should not cost more than
$500, in my opinion. I guessed that the VSI might cost a few hundred
dollars US as a conservative estimate. My instructor and another
student stated that the cost is more like in the $1000's for a typical
instrument. Is this true? It's not that I doubt my instructor or my
fellow student. I just want to get an idea of how much these various
devices cost.
For a base reference, I would consider the standard instruments found
in Cessna 172.

Checkhttp://www.dynonavionics.com

Beautiful equipment at a reasonable cost.



Yes it is a very economical alternative, but not without some
compromises. Dynon needs airspeed as an input to stabilize its
reference systems. Other systems such as Blue Mountain use GPS as one
of the inputs. The ones that are truly inertial (ie not requiring any
inputs) are not in the same price range. So when comparing to the old
fashioned spinning gyros, one has to keep these differences in mind.