Went to SunNFun this week and had a discussion with several companies that are working on STC certification of experimental airplane digital autopilots. I have wanted an autopilot for years but have been unwilling to pay $20k plus. These new autopilots are expected to be about $9k installed and are more capable than present offerings.

Trio expects certification this summer for Cessna 182. Other models will be added based on # of requests. Since the 180/185 are so similar to the 182, they expect the FAA will issue an approval letter soon after a request.

Whether you are interested in an autopilot or not, you could help expedite the 180/185 approval by e-mailing your name, a/c year/model, n-number, and s/n to: [email protected]. This does not commit you to anything, just gets the Skywagon approval quicker. Please pass the word to other Skywagon owners.

Thanks
http://trioavionics.com/
http://www.trutrakap.com/

Done!

Received a reply today:

Hi Daryl,

We'll be working on the 185 here pretty soon. Probably have the PMA and STC by years end.

Paul

and here is an update from Trutrak:

Hello all!

What an awesome Sun N Fun! I know that many of you made it by the booth and we tried to speak with everyone that we could. We were a little overwhelmed with the crowd at times! We will be better prepared with staff and space at Oshkosh.

Quick recap for the new folks here.

Install kit approval has been issued for the C172 and C177, and we are taking orders / delivering those kits now. We expect that EAA will begin selling the STC for installation of those parts in the near future (30-60 days). TruTrak low risk facility PMA has been issued. Final system approval is expected by summer / Oshkosh.

Ok, let’s get down to some new business.

There are nearly 800 of you on our interest list, and that is an AMAZING response. I haven’t yet made it through all of the responses or even finished categorizing the aircraft types. But I will get that done in the next week or so. I will say that there were basically three main questions that we answered at the booth:
1 – How much will it cost?
2 – Can it interface with my (insert TSO’d / PMA’d product here)?
3 – When will you get to MY aircraft type?

1 – The install kits for C172 and C177 are priced at $1000, I expect other aircraft types to be very similar if not identical. The autopilot and servos are expected to be priced at $4000. The STC will be purchased from EAA and is expected in the $100 or $200 range. So, we think that complete system less installation will be just over $5000.

2 – At the lowest risk level PMA, no one is going to be allowed to interface with approved avionics. Means we can only interface with handhelds. But the good news is that we are not expecting to stay at the lowest level for long. I am going to Chicago tomorrow to begin working getting our PMA approval stepped up to allow that. No promises on timeline, but I will say that I am very committed to achieving this. I am honestly going to do everything in my power to have that in place by Oshkosh.

3 – We have had a great response and I haven’t figured all the numbers yet, but right now it looks like the next couple items on the list are C182 and PA28. We also want to get back and pickup the first part of the C172 line. I am going to try and get those done before Oshkosh, but there really aren’t very many months between now and then so things are going to be moving fast.

I’ll update again when we have something else to say. Please feel free to email back, I will try and get back to you in a reasonable amount of time.

One more thing, THANK YOU for the awesome response at SnF! I’m really looking forward to the next steps!

Latest from TruTrack:

Andrew Barker <[email protected]>

Apr 19 (1 day ago)

to Andrew
It’s me again!

Ok, I have gone through the current list and here is what I have come up with for our current plan to add models. This is NOT set in stone, but is our tentative plan.

Cessna 172 F-R models (installation design complete and approved)
Cessna 177 (installation design complete and approved)
Piper PA-28 (installation design beginning – approval by summer)
Cessna 182 (installation design beginning – approval by summer)
Cessna 172 early models (installation design beginning – approval by summer)
Cessna 175 / 180 (might be added in with the early 172s – approval by summer if we can add them in)

These are currently the next planned types we want to tackle. These are not in order of when we plan to get them!!!

Bonanza
Grumman
Mooney
Piper PA-24

Just because you aren’t listed does not mean we won’t get your type done, or even done soon. This is just where the current interest lies. I do not have a timeline on approval for the types we are currently working on, other than summer. I will say that we are shooting for Oshkosh timeframe, but that’s a best guess right now. There are also obviously many models contained in the loose grouping that we have above, and we will work that out when the time comes.

If you have one of the types we are currently working on and you are one of the folks that said they wanted to provide aircraft or something like that, please contact me.

Last week after Sun N Fun, I was out of town for meetings with FAA / EAA. The meeting was to discuss which certification pathways exist for the remainder of the autopilot approval. We discussed many things such as software approval, HIRF, and Lightning. There are lots of different ways to get those approvals accomplished and we are working on exactly which pathway will give you the most bang for the buck. I will not yet promise what the feature set of the autopilot will be at the first date of shipping, but I am committed to allowing as much interface as possible. I won’t get into the weeds on detail here, but rest assured that we will deliver you a very capable system that has unmatched safety features.

We are working very hard on getting the last details ironed out to be able to provide you with full systems by the Oshkosh timeframe. As I have stated before, if you have a 172 or 177 and you want to get your install kit, give us a call and we can ship those kits immediately. Ordering your kit does get you an “official” place in line. We can take an order for a full system and set the delivery date to coincide with the release of the full system as well. We do NOT charge credit cards until we ship product. I have had many of you ask to place deposits, and unless we have an install kit for your aircraft, we just aren’t comfortable accepting payment without providing some sort of product.

We are also working on getting the web store up and running so that you can place your orders online without having to call…I’ll keep you updated on that progress too. Lots of things going on behind the scenes here.

The FAA and groups like EAA / AOPA / AEA / GAMA are all very committed to improving safety in YOUR aircraft. This project goes so far beyond any one company or even autopilots. At TruTrak, we are very happy to be a small piece of this puzzle. Attitude gyro, EFIS, DG, autopilot, and many other things are finally going to be affordable for the legacy fleet. Keep letting your FAA / advocacy group / congress people know that you are happy with how things are moving, because they are moving at lightning speed!

Like I’ve said every other time, let all of your friends know about the list on our website. None of this would be possible with the support of great people like you.

That’s all for now, tailwinds and blue skies!

I have been following TruTrack for some time and am very impressed with their offerings.
My 185 does not have an A/P and it is something I would like to have in a year or two.

Tom

I sicked a buddy of mine with a Pacer onto TruTrak.
He in turn sicked some shortwingpiper.org guys on them.
Several contacted TruTrak expressing interest in getting on the AML,
which resulted in TruTrak telling them that only firm "I will buy" commitments would help with that.

LATEST LATEST from TruTrak on 6 JUN 2017 :


It has been a while since I have given you all an update on how things are going, so here you go!

Things are moving forward very well in the weeks since Sun N Fun when we received approval of the installation kit for the C172 and C177. We are also currently working on installation design for the C182 and PA-28.

The majority of our time is being spent on finalization of the paperwork and flight testing required for the full system approval. We are still very much on track to have that all completed in time to begin deliveries at AirVenture. These are probably cumbersome and fairly boring details as far as most of you are concerned, but they are actually quite important!

On May 25th we did another flight with the FAA demonstrating failure modes and some more normal use modes of the Vizion autopilot system. This was done in our C172 with special failure mode software installed in the autopilot. We also were able to show them, for the first time, our TOP SECRET new feature that will be included in the Vizion system at launch in July! They absolutely loved the feature and are very excited about it’s inclusion in the final product.

One of our main reasons for wanting to offer the Vizion to the certified market is to improve the safety of the existing fleet. Because of the way the Vizion autopilot is designed, the failure modes that we demonstrated to the FAA actually require multiple failures to even be possible, but we wanted to make sure that we tested and demonstrated things in the absolute worst case scenario. During this flight we demonstrated things such as dual max servo velocity hard over failures, servo lockups, and gyro / pressure transducer failures. Through ALL of these tests, the aircraft remains quite flyable and in the “real world” the autopilot will actually recognize these failures and automatically disconnect.

I think that is all for now, looking forward to seeing you all in Oshkosh.

As always, please share this email with anyone that you know that is not on the list and should be!

Andrew Barker
President / CEO
TruTrak Flight Systems

EastTexasPilot wrote:LATEST LATEST from TruTrak on 6 JUN 2017 :


It has been a while since I have given you all an update on how things are going, so here you go!

Things are moving forward very well in the weeks since Sun N Fun when we received approval of the installation kit for the C172 and C177. We are also currently working on installation design for the C182 and PA-28.

The majority of our time is being spent on finalization of the paperwork and flight testing required for the full system approval. We are still very much on track to have that all completed in time to begin deliveries at AirVenture. These are probably cumbersome and fairly boring details as far as most of you are concerned, but they are actually quite important!

On May 25th we did another flight with the FAA demonstrating failure modes and some more normal use modes of the Vizion autopilot system. This was done in our C172 with special failure mode software installed in the autopilot. We also were able to show them, for the first time, our TOP SECRET new feature that will be included in the Vizion system at launch in July! They absolutely loved the feature and are very excited about it’s inclusion in the final product.

One of our main reasons for wanting to offer the Vizion to the certified market is to improve the safety of the existing fleet. Because of the way the Vizion autopilot is designed, the failure modes that we demonstrated to the FAA actually require multiple failures to even be possible, but we wanted to make sure that we tested and demonstrated things in the absolute worst case scenario. During this flight we demonstrated things such as dual max servo velocity hard over failures, servo lockups, and gyro / pressure transducer failures. Through ALL of these tests, the aircraft remains quite flyable and in the “real world” the autopilot will actually recognize these failures and automatically disconnect.

I think that is all for now, looking forward to seeing you all in Oshkosh.

As always, please share this email with anyone that you know that is not on the list and should be!

Andrew Barker
President / CEO
TruTrak Flight Systems

I didn't know this was Andrew! Hey! I've email you a couple times regarding a couple customers of mine up in Alberta here.
Just wondering if you guys are going to have kits that can be put into planes that didn't originally have A/Ps? Complete with the part rib and all that's needed?

Thanks.

David

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

I'm not Andrew, I just posted the latest email from Andrew, lol.

EastTexasPilot wrote:I'm not Andrew, I just posted the latest email from Andrew, lol.

Haha. Well shucks. I got tat from him a while ago. Thought maybe I'd gotten an inside track. Haha. Sorry about that.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

I was just posting the latest from TruTrak. The email I posted was sent a few weeks ago and the last update here had been back in April. Now the thread has the latest info.

Latest from Trio:

All,

I am so sorry that I have not communicated with you, my customers and potential customers for some time now.

We received STC approval for the Cessna 172, 175, and 182 yesterday. Actually last week, July 13th, but we had to fix some language and add the 175 type certificate for you 3A17 TCDS 172 owners.

We are starting to ship Cessna 182 kits and are testing the 182 fitment for the roll servo on the Cessna 180 next week. The Cessna 185 roll servo will be tested in several weeks.

We will tackle the pitch servo on the Cessna 180 and 185 next week also.

If you would like to look over the Cessna 182 documentation on our website, and download it to prepare for installation, please visit us at:

http://www.thestcgroup.net


In the upper right there is a Documents link. Just click on it and you can look around. I think you will like what you see.

We will be in booths 2111 and 2112 at Oshkosh.

We should get PMA approval from the Los Angeles MIDO quickly. They were waiting for the STC Number. This only takes a week or so.

For those of you who have purchased kits, I am very appreciative of your understanding.

My team was working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week and, thus, we just did not have a spare minute to call you with updates. I cannot believe I got something of a day off today !

So hang in there. We got through this. We are all really tired and need rest but we have Oshkosh next week.

Lucky us. No rest for the weary.


Paul C. Odum
The STC Group, LLC
Camarillo Airport, CA (KCMA)
Cell 805.304.5246
Fuzing Tech With Tradition