Sport pilot here. I've got an iPad, but not a laptop or stationary mac or win computer outside of work, and I don't think I want one either. Instrument rating isn't an option. Light sport suits my mission just fine, so I don't have any plans to get a PPL either.

What real benefits would there be to having a budget EFIS with map (AvMap EKP V, Kanardia Nesis III or similar) and not just steam gauges and an iPad with Skydemon? The only thing I could think of that I might like at some point in the future, is an autopilot. It could be a neat safety feature, to lower work load or in case I really mess up and end up in IMC. But in the foreseeable future, I don't think I want to spend money on it.

I am currently renting a plane, and I use the latter setup. I am very happy with planning flights at home, and not having to mess around with exporting/importing files or anything. I just rig it up in the cockpit and go. I've been saving and planning my own plane for a while, and I don't really see why I would want to spend money on an EFIS with a map? Steam gauges and a 80mm digital ADHARS with an iPad seems to do everything I would ever want or need. What am I missing?

Sentry
iPad
Foreflight or similar

It’s all you need based on your post

I usually do all my flight planning on Google Earth. It is great for distance and terrain. I Have steam gauges and a Garmin 795 in the plane but never upload any type of route because plans change and I seldom fly in a straight line. Once I have looked over the route and bail outs on Google Earth I really don't have a need to load up a flight plan I can do distance and fuel calculations in my head pretty easy. I have people tracking me with my In Reach so I never file one with Flight Service. Just depends on training. I did not even have a GPS the first 150 hours of flying, I just used charts.
DENNY

Depends on where you’re flying

If it’s just around a ranch or two, meh

If you’re going around airspace or some major cross countries foreflight is worth its weight in gold, though a free fltplan go does a good chunk of what FF does when it comes to navigation, taxi diagrams, FBOs, weather etc

Panel wise, I’d get a garmin GI275 and replace your attitude indicator and probably vac system with it



If you later want to add on stuff it’ll play well with other instruments

NineThreeKilo wrote:Depends on where you’re flying

If it’s just around a ranch or two, meh

If you’re going around airspace or some major cross countries foreflight is worth its weight in gold, though a free fltplan go does a good chunk of what FF does when it comes to navigation, taxi diagrams, FBOs, weather etc

Panel wise, I’d get a garmin GI275 and replace your attitude indicator and probably vac system with it



If you later want to add on stuff it’ll play well with other instruments

I do like going a little bit further, and exploring new areas and back/sidecountry airstrips. Here in Scandinavia there isn`t many places where you can go in a straight line for more than a few hours until you hit either airspace or a border. I`ve been using SkyDemon and I`m very happy with it. Worth every penny for skirting or staying under airspace. It´s well updated too, even for small strips, so nice when going exploring.

I`ve been looking at the Kanardia Horis 80mm. It´s a bit cheaper than the Garmin, but does the same thing. Love the CAT 5 connectors, so no wiring harness! Probably cant be upgraded or expanded as much, but enough for me.

Good to hear I´m on to something!

Utah-Jay wrote:Sentry
iPad
Foreflight or similar

It’s all you need based on your post

Good! I really don´t want much more unless I need it. Thought a modern sixpack iteration would be neat. From top left: ASI, digital horizon/ADHARS, Alt. Bottom left: rpm. EMS, VSI. iPad, com and XPDR in the middle. Nothing on the right side. Flying a Savage Cub now, but I want a side-by-side.

Varanger wrote:

NineThreeKilo wrote:Depends on where you’re flying

If it’s just around a ranch or two, meh

If you’re going around airspace or some major cross countries foreflight is worth its weight in gold, though a free fltplan go does a good chunk of what FF does when it comes to navigation, taxi diagrams, FBOs, weather etc

Panel wise, I’d get a garmin GI275 and replace your attitude indicator and probably vac system with it



If you later want to add on stuff it’ll play well with other instruments

I do like going a little bit further, and exploring new areas and back/sidecountry airstrips. Here in Scandinavia there isn`t many places where you can go in a straight line for more than a few hours until you hit either airspace or a border. I`ve been using SkyDemon and I`m very happy with it. Worth every penny for skirting or staying under airspace. It´s well updated too, even for small strips, so nice when going exploring.

I`ve been looking at the Kanardia Horis 80mm. It´s a bit cheaper than the Garmin, but does the same thing. Love the CAT 5 connectors, so no wiring harness! Probably cant be upgraded or expanded as much, but enough for me.

Good to hear I´m on to something!

Utah-Jay wrote:Sentry
iPad
Foreflight or similar

It’s all you need based on your post

Good! I really don´t want much more unless I need it. Thought a modern sixpack iteration would be neat. From top left: ASI, digital horizon/ADHARS, Alt. Bottom left: rpm. EMS, VSI. iPad, com and XPDR in the middle. Nothing on the right side. Flying a Savage Cub now, but I want a side-by-side.

I’d highly recommend going with the 275 over that




The lack of synthetic vision and the dynamic bug alone make them almost two different systems

Example
Want the easiest zero visibility steep turn? Keep the ball centered roll into it, put that circle dot on the horizon line and you’ll be turning as clean or cleaner then guys with thousands of hours IMC


Or if you’re climbing on that dark stormy night, not only do you have terrain shown but if that bug isn’t pointing where you want the airplane to end up, best go to plan B


If you get into more instrument flying the tapes and presentation on the 275 are also much better too, add a AP or get your instrument and the 275 has a flight director, which is a game changer if you’re flying in crap conditions or even just if you add a AP, garmin is the iPhone of the aviation world, keep with their ecosystem is the easy button from resale value, operations and standardization (if you can fly one garmin you can probably quickly adapt to them all), plus later upgrades

It's a very impressive piece of kit, indeed. Worth looking at, atleast. But it is three times as expensive as the Kanardia, and I am not sure if I really need the extra functions. Then again, compared to the total cost of an A/C, the GI275 isn't that much more! But everything adds up...

It might be better to pay extra and never need it, than to be stingy and suddenly wishing you had those functions. But spending more on gear means less money for gas and practice.

I think it is difficult to evaluate the cost/benefit of the functions, compared to the risk of ending up in IMC.

Thanks for the tip, atleast!

No instrument will replace proper IFR training, sorry if I'm being blunt but without the required training your just an accident looking for a place to happen. Further more even with initial training but without ongoing practice and maintaining a level of currency the risks are elevated again. The choice of presentations is irrelevant without a foundation for the use of.

If it's day vfr use you are planning then just keep it simple, it lowers cost and it removes the temptation for "gethomeitis". Once you have the foundational skills establish then add the "bling". By all means fabricate an "expandable" harness as you pointed out the Kanardia CAT5 is easy peasy. I have Kanardia primary instruments in my airplane along with two AV30's for navigation and an iPad with FltPlan Go for sectional mapping. I have NO intentions of attempting IFR ops, if I want to fly in bad weather I'll go to work and get paid to do so.

Mapleflt wrote:No instrument will replace proper IFR training, sorry if I'm being blunt but without the required training your just an accident looking for a place to happen. Further more even with initial training but without ongoing practice and maintaining a level of currency the risks are elevated again. The choice of presentations is irrelevant without a foundation for the use of.

If it's day vfr use you are planning then just keep it simple, it lowers cost and it removes the temptation for "gethomeitis". Once you have the foundational skills establish then add the "bling". By all means fabricate an "expandable" harness as you pointed out the Kanardia CAT5 is easy peasy. I have Kanardia primary instruments in my airplane along with two AV30's for navigation and an iPad with FltPlan Go for sectional mapping. I have NO intentions of attempting IFR ops, if I want to fly in bad weather I'll go to work and get paid to do so.

Thanks! I tried to be clear that I will stick exclusively to daytime VFR. We're talking light sport here, so IFR isn't even an option! I am perfectly happy with what I can do with light sport, and when I feel I need or want more then I'll get a PPL. No need or wish to try and push the light sport envelope then!

There's always that "But what if a mean cloud stalks you through the mountains and jumpst and traps you when you're in a valley!?", but I figure training and awareness is the best solution. Come to think of it, the only cases where planning and preparation could not have prevented getting someone trapped in IMC, have been excursions far longer into the backcountry than what I have neither planned or am able to here in Scandinavia. Weather forecasting is probably a lot better here than in the sparcely populated areas of Alaska and Canada.

I'm not familiar with the regs in Europe, where in Scandanavia are you & do they also have "sport pilot" and "LSA" categories?

It´s a bit complicated, and I really am not quite sure about all of this, so take what I say with a grain of salt… But roughly, we had a 1040lbs MTOW limit for a long time. But when the US got their light sport with 1320lbs MTOW, most plane makers thought it didn´t think it make sense to develop one plane for each market. So they made planes that were juuust light enough to be used by two people with a little dash of fuel. A handful of makers, especially in france didn´t care about anything outside their own country, and kept making very light planes adapted to the 1040lbs limit.

Then EASA opened up for it´s member countries to up their weight limit and bring up on par with the 1320lbs you have now (before mosaic), and even with a little extra. We still have no upper speed limit, retracts and cs/variable props are allowed, and now we will be allowed to fly on top and can earn the right to fly VFR at night. There´s no

Some countries have jumped on the opportunity, and also renamed the class «light sport». We are waiting for new laws to pass here in Norway, and we will get the whole shebang. I think Sweden, Finland, Germany and UK are positive as well. France is being very french, and very pissed about everyone else not adapting to them. They want to stick with 1040lbs it seems, most likely to protect the plane makers that never thought about preparing for the future, but stick with their old designs. Danish authorities have surprisingly decided to be a bit of a dick and have suggested to not even allow 1320lbs to land! The national aero club/UL owners interest are a bit annoyed and is trying to stop this.

So it´s a bit of a hot mess, but moving in the right direction. The upside of having this weird period with 1320lbs in the US and 1040lbs here, mean that some plane builders designed a few planes that are quite light, yet capable of carrying more than their own weight.

But now you guys are getting mosaic and the whole thing starts over again just when we thought we were about to finish!

Seems like EASA had a "very light aircraft" category before our LSA,
like back in 2003, with a max TO weight of 750 KG (1650 lbs).
The US came up with LSA in 2004, with a 1320# max weight.
I was disappointed that LSA wasn't up to VLA standards.
Seems like going from VLA to LSA is a step back.
But this 1040 MTOW thing sounds like something different yet-- "microlight" maybe?

Yeah, I think it is extra difficult over here in Europe, with all these countries having different opinions. I wasn´t aware of the VLA category. Now we have whats called LAPL. Unlike the light sport, wich are all national categories, LAPL is the same for all EASA countries. It is basically PPL but without instrument training and with fewer obligatory hours of training. It allows for a MTWO of 2000kg and up to four people in total. Unlike light sport license, LAPL can be relatively easily upgraded to PPL.

The old 1040lbs limit had different names in different countries, but I think it is commonly reffered to as UL in general, but it was called «mikrofly» (Means «microplanes» kind of) here. Thats why european plane makers will offer the same plane in a UL version and an LSA version.

I´m curiou as to what is going to happen here with Mosaic. With PPL, LAPL and 1320 SPL I thought we had a pretty good thing going. Mosaic sounds fine, but just when we´ve put all the worms back in one can, another one burst open!