I recently spent a great deal of money upgrading my panel with a new Garmin GMA350, GTN-650, GTX-330ES, and GDL88, plus a new JPI EDM930, and to top it all off a new vacuum driven HSI. I've never flown with an HSI before but many of the pilots I know that fly for a living say they are wonderful instruments. Frankly I've been extremely disappointed. In my old panel I had a Garmin 496 and once your waypoints were programmed in, all you had to do was keep the two chevrons lined up and you were guaranteed to fly right over the top of the next waypoint no matter how strong or which direction the winds, or whether you happened to be left or right of the original courseline. Simple and extremely accurate. I have found that navigating with this HSI is extremely labor intensive and sloppy because of all the knob twisting and constant corrections that are required. First you have to align the compass card with your magnetic compass, and then align your course pointer with the desired track. I find that adjustments must be made every few minutes and am very unhappy with the results given how much it cost to install. This is a non-slaved instrument, and as far as I can tell non-auto-slewing too. Had I known more about HSI's beforehand I wouldn't have purchased it. That's on me for not doing better homework ahead of time.
I'm hoping at least some of the source of my unhappiness is either operator error or lack of training. Anyone else have one of these HSIs and can offer some advice on how to get better results? I had my mechanic call the shop that overhauled this HSI and they said their standard for max deviation is 4 degrees every 10 minutes. That seems awfully sloppy to me for a primary navigation instrument.
Thanks,