EFIS technology remains the hot topic on the minds of pilots who are upgrading their panels. Any pilot that spends any time in the clouds cannot ignore the possibility of a vacu­um pump or vacuum/attitude indicator (AI) failure in weather. VFR pilots don’t share this concern. If you are concerned about your attitude in VFR, you look out the windshield and correct. The attitude indicator, in most cases, in VFR, is not contributing much to the safety of the flight. That does not mean that a VFR pilot should not understand the role of the AI, in fact I recom­mend every VFR pilot practice flying “under the hood.”

One Christmas I took my VFR Cherokee 140 along with my wife and brother and we flew to Nantucket for the annual “Christmas Stroll”. This is a weekend when shops and vendors decorate storefronts and sidewalks in the spirit of the season, and it draws folks from all around. This combined with the charm of Nantucket’s cobblestone streets and often a bit of fog makes for a delightful atmosphere. When it was time to depart, it was dark and visibility was okay for a VFR departure. I was cleared to depart to the south. Once I was clear of the runway, I found myself over water, in the pitch dark with absolutely no visual attitude reference. My passengers were yapping away, and I asked them to shut and let me fly. I requested a turn-back towards the land as soon as possible which took longer than I hoped. It scared me and caused me to put more emphasis on being able to fly the aircraft in this scenario.

A year later I upgraded to a Cherokee Six and was required to fly ten hours with an instructor. After two hours, the instructor was comfortable that I could handle the Six and asked what I wanted to do. I spent the next eight hours under the hood. Since the AI plays such a small role in VFR flight, VFR pilots aren’t lining up to upgrade their panels with EFIS technology.

The majority of my consultant clients come to me with out­dated avionics looking to upgrade the panel for Light IFR. Most have personal minimums in the 800 to 1,000 ft AGL range. They are comfortable spending some time in the clouds but would rather be above and their destination is usually towards bet­ter weather. Approaches to minimums … “forget about it!” My philosophy is that a Light IFR pilot does not need EFIS in the panel. You can overhaul your gyros and vacuum pump for about $2,500 and have a vacuum system that you should be able to trust (with good filter maintenance) for many hours. For those pilots going light, with a long-term plan for the aircraft, who have already checked off all the important boxes, and with the desire to add EFIS (and have the dough), the discussion is elec­tronic flight instruments, not big screen EFIS.

Let’s look at what is available today in the electronic flight in­strument marketplace. Next month, we will do the same and visit big screen EFIS options. Note that Dynon actually had the first certified solid-state electronic flight instrument in their D-10A. Its role was primarily as the STC backup for their Big Screen HDX EFIS option but was also approved as the first legal replace­ment for your vacuum AI in your certified aircraft. The new D30 (replacement for the D-10A) is only approved as a back-up for the HDX and is no longer an option to replace your AI.

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