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


The big boys are actually doing this one right.  Independent boxes for
each function.  Dual (or more) displays which can select data from the
various boxes.  Necessary inter-box communication could be handled via
Ethernet or similar.  Fault tolerance designed-in.  I don't want the
engine to quit if my GPS starts sending out unpredicted bogus data.


Matt-