On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 5:39:31 AM UTC-8, Jim Hogue wrote:
Any suggestions? Either currently available or coming in the near future (next year or so) would be ok, I am not in a rush. Prefer it would fit in one 57mm hole.

I take care of navigation and tasks with other standalone devices (full on OpenVario with its own vario/STF sensor board, and a Kobo backup) so I don’t really need any nav functions. Above all I want the best total energy and gust compensated technology available, the best to allow me to understand airmass movement while cruising across the full speed range. I want MacReady speed-to-fly function (although I use that as advisory information only, I don’t aggressively dolphin fly...). I also need climb/cruise and airmass awareness audio functionality of course, head-out-of-the-cockpit being best.

I fly an ASH-26E, and I would prefer a system that can work off just pitot and static, avoiding the vertical fin mounted TE probe (which gets hammered during engine runs). This is because thermalling during powered climb can be important to me when flying out of high density altitude airports. But if using the TE probe gets me significantly better airmass awareness in cruise, I would take that.

I am attracted to the FLARM voice warnings that the S8/S10 units give, but I would do without this in order to get the best airmass awareness.

My OpenVario gives me a thermalling assist graphic which seems to work great, but if the new system offers improvement here I would like that also.

Please offer you experiences and knowledge here. Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Jim J6

A couple of other points for Jim: The Air Avionics has very good voice warnings of Flarm and ADSB targets, spoilers open, gear down, etc. It is possible to thermal with the inertial air mass sensors alone (no pneumatics needed) with the engine boom deployed.

An interesting thing about pneumatic noise from the engine boom is that the signal required is still present, just very noisy. Using the old Winpilot Thermal Maximizer (still the best) or the pretty good copy on the CN vario, you can mind the thermal center correction arrow ignoring the noisy data itself and thermal quite successfully. The software integrates out the noise.. This is true regardless of the vario input - at least I've done it routinely with a 302/Winpilot in the old days and the CN now.