In article ,
PaulH wrote:
Is it possible to legally retrofit a panel-mount solid state AI to an
old aircraft? Seems to me this the shape of things to come in the
gyro backup game.

I've been playing with one of the Analog solid state gyros. I want to
build a small combination TC + "DG" instrument (no absolute heading, but
you could think of it as automating a timed turn). A single gyro is
just *barely* stable enough (with multi-point temperature calibration
for each individual chip) to provide a heading reference alone. It's
easily stable enough to provide a TC-like display. I think most of the
commercial units you'll see will be 3-axis gyro/accelerometer combos
(like Control Vision's system) which can self-calibrate (and for that
matter automatically "erect" even without being perfectly square to the
airframe) by using the accelerometers as a long-term stable reference.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/