Hi Paul! Thanks for your hard work in this forum. You are heading the right direction with the PC solution. I was once close friends with Jim Munn, the owner of MOTEC USA in Huntington Beach CA. He provided the ECU to Mazda for the Le Mans winning 4 rotor car back in the early ninetys. (For marketing reasons, the manufacturers did not allow MOTEC to put their name on the race cars). I am writing to address all those who keep bringing up these race car ecu units unnecessarily. Aircraft simply do not need what the MOTEC, or any of the other highly capable units for race/street performance cars can do. Even the lowly home built Mega Squirt is more than is needed. (I own two of those)

Think about this folks, what Paul is doing with the PC solution is far superior to any of the automotive units. He will potentially be providing users with capability to interface all of the functions of the aircraft, directly on the instrument panel, not just the engine, or monitoring flap angle, airspeed, etc. But we would be able to use it to control everything, even flying the plane remotely, or with auto pilot operated from the PC board; just on one of these small fast PC board setups. Imagine getting into your craft, turning on the ignition, and looking at a 15" computer monitor that you built into your dash, and seeing hundreds of data streams on display, access to pinhole mini cameras mounted in you cowling, or anywhere else! This is transformative, it is revolutionary to the experimental home built industry. I truly hope some of you programmers join in with Paul to make it a reality.

Ed Carver

Racing Beat sells and supports the Motec unit and it is a very good unit. Price however is about $1,800.

Thanks Ed for your understanding on this issue. I might also point out that there are some very sophisticated moving map programs out there that will run on the same type of PC mother board and hardware. Some show the terrain you are flying over in 3d with all obstructions shown so this is a monumental advantage in low visibility conditions.
http://www.navzilla.com/

I wrote my first articles for Kitplanes on this subject back in 1988 1989. The Home Built Glass Cockpit by Paul Lamar Kitplanes June 1988 page 69 The future can be here now: electronic instrument displays in your homebuilt. Glass Cockpit: Part II by Paul Lamar Kitplanes January 1989 page 66 Automatic position reporting could be helpful when pilot's hands and mind are full.
Paul Lamar HEY PAUL!!!!!!


I just felt saying THANKS A LOT FOR LETTING THE REST OF TAG ALONG FOR A GREAT RIDE!!!!!! [YOU'RE THE MAN!]
Gene Kahn

Here are some pictures of my late 1980's glass cockpit in the C182 with a 8088 mother board. Updated the map every second written in QB under DOS no less. I would use QB again and DOS if it supported USB but it won't so Linux and C it is.

Paul Lamar

Paul,

1201 seems an odd squawk code!! I never had one that close to 1200 when assigned by ATC. :-)

Bill Schertz

Yes I don't know what was going on there :) Judging by the altimeter
and throttle I was at 10,000 feet.

Paul Lamar