Sun-n-Fun 2019

[Jon Matcho]

I'll be at Sun-n-Fun on Friday 4/5 and Saturday 4/6 without too-specific of an agenda if anyone wants to meet up.  Anyone else going?

I'm looking forward to shaking off this winter's freeze and kick-starting my building muscles!

[JTest]

G'day Jon

I will be there Saturday 4/6.

Jeff

[Thompsolonian]

If I could, I would, but it's a drill weekend at the Air Reserves...

Maybe next year!

[Jon Matcho]

Jeff, let's be sure to meet up.  I will have my better half and sister with me on Saturday, but we can definitely catch up somewhere.  My phone number is in my profile -- text me when you have some time to kill.

Jon

[Jon Matcho]

Sun-n-Fun 2019 flew by faster than ever this year.  As usual I tried to fit too much into a short timeframe, which included a vacation with my better half, a visit to Disney (for her), a visit with my sister, Sun-n-Fun, then a tour of Kennedy Space Center on Monday to watch SpaceX's historic production launch of their Falcon Heavy rocket.  Well, as soon as we got their we punted Disney which was partly a result of a Palmetto bug in the Airbnb bathroom ('Palmetto bug' is a friendly term for "nasty ass cockroach", and yes, I know they're more common in Florida but they're still nasty).  With that we headed from Orlando to St. Pete Beach to see my sister for a night.

Next day was off to Sun-n-Fun, where I realized I hadn't planned my agenda (which was partly because I wanted to balance my attention between airplanes and my traveling companion).  She was more than accommodating, so by the 2nd day there I was able to see a few things and get into it.  What caught my eye this year was the growing number of small avionics companies.  A company from Italy caught my eye with an instrument that fits in a standard 3-1/8" hole and can be configured as 1 of 9 possible instruments. 

 

I spent quite a bit of time speaking with the vendor and probing the underlying technology, which amounts to custom microcontroller programming with devices connected through an RS-485 bus (as best I could tell).

You can find more information from them here:  http://www.ifd-net.com/  They want close to $1,000 per primary instrument, but perhaps less for "slave" units (just displays and knobs but without sensors).  This strikes me as being expensive compared to other options such as Garmin's G5 electronic flight instrument which is $1,250 new.  The benefit of IFD's approach is that their instruments are designed to look like classic instruments without the distractions of this new fangled stuff 😉 (which may be inevitable that we all get used to at some point).

Looking back I definitely needed another day to take advantage the free information from various experts and vendors.  I was able to relight my motivational fire to get my butt in gear with my shop, more flying time, and figuring out how to attend more fly-ins this year.  I took a bunch of pictures and put a few into the Sun-n-Fun 2019 gallery for your viewing pleasure.

Edited April 12, 2019 by Jon Matcho
Added link to photo gallery