DME recommendations

Ron Natalie wrote:
: Maintenance? I've had a KN64 in my panel for over a decade.
: I haven't had any maintenance done to it. Now the rest of the
: King SC stack is a different story. The GS crumped and occasionally
: the displays on the KX155's fail. The transponder needs regular
: attention and the stupid ADF I am never certain if it is ever working.

: I'm in the middle of switching over to a Garmin stack, the only
: thing I'm keeping is the KN64.

: On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to install one
: if I didn't already have one. Back when I put it in, I knew it was
: likely to be the first casualty of the GPS era.

I'll pipe in here and say that a DME is still incredibly handy to have. It's
stone-cold simple to dial up, independent of databases and the rest of the GPS
fiddling cruft. If you already have one and it works, it's got a lot of utility for
situational awareness if you have a chart in front of you. The IFR GPS doesn't give
you as much quick situational awareness unless it's moving map, since you'll have to
fiddle with something to get a distance/bearing to something.

That said, for people shelling out big bucks for an install, what everyone
said about the GPS makes sense. I put a KNS-80 (ILS/GS/NAV/DME/RNAV) in my Cherokee
about 2 years ago, as we needed another NAV and a GS. It's lots of bang for the buck,
and they're almost free on ebay these days. If you're going to pay $1000-$2000 for an
install, though, the $500 KNS-80 isn't quite as useful as a $1000 IFR GPS UNLESS you
need another NAV/ILS/GS as well. Then it makes a lot of sense.

-Cory

--

************************************************** ***********************
* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
************************************************** ***********************