A circular needle tells you how strong the lift is (I used to have a pure netto vario in another glider and liked that a lot; a quick 2 kts offset gave me relative netto). But it also gives you acceleration: how fast lift strength is increasing/decreasing. The CNv ribbon changes the scale and the needle simultaneously, making it less intuitive and slower to understand what you want to know at a glance. I suspect the designers will say, well, the instrument is so responsive and smooth and immune to transients that all you need is the number it's pointing at. I don't agree.

I LOVE my CNv but unlike the CAI LNAV (in the appearance of the inputs of which it superficially resembles) the UI leaves a lot to be desired, whether menus, information architecture, inputs, navigating the device, or readouts. The exceptions are the numeric readouts on the main screen (quite good and comprehensive) and the thermal assistant (marvelous!). And the audio is also very good. I've honestly never tried to use the navigation functions because finding and using anything else in the device is frustrating for me. I've memorized the few button pushes I need because, IMO (and experience), the UI is not very intuitive and the chance of accidentally changing a setting is too great.

To repeat: I would hate to give up my CNv. It gives me much better information about the thermal than anything else. But I'd love to redesign the user interface. The designers may have wanted to avoid the CAI approach of a digital control unit and separate analog readout. But the resulting package leaves something to be desired for me.

Ironically, while I worried the 2 1/4" size would be a problem for this aging pilot, it's perfectly fine.

Chip Bearden