I have a different feeling on my Chelton.
When I ordered my Enstrom it was really hard to get real world information about how it would work. You had not even received yours yet. I ultimately decided to buy the Chelton for any increase in safety it might provide.
5 months later, I am slightly more qualified to make my own assessment. Knowing what I know today, I would not have put the Chelton in. It just doesn't do enough for $100,000. In fact, I recently upgraded my panel with a Garmin 496 to make up for some of the shortcomings.
Here are just some my issues.
1) It takes a long time to boot up - Longer than anything else in my cockpit, by far..which means I am burning extra fuel, etc.
2) I think it is a shame the Chelton requires a different Jeppesen subscription than my 430 (or now the 496, too).
3)The Vertical Speed Indicator in the Chelton is almost worthless. In fact, you can't see it at all from the co-pilot seat, so it make this helicopter pretty hard to train in. I would highly suggest a traditional gauge for VSI in future installations.
4) The terrain awareness feature is cool, but it squawks way too early for helicopters. It is always giving off false alarms. It feels like it is really set up for airplane speeds, etc. I leave it off most all the time.
5) I wish you could see airport diagrams, (like Garmin's "Safe Taxi") etc. Chelton says this will never happen on this product.
6) The Chelton can't talk to my 430, so I have to constantly type airport identifiers into both units...what a pain!
7) Traffic and weather options are unbelievably expensive for it.
8) It can be confusing to operate...some things you set on the MFD, others on the PFD...yeow!
9) It needs a better Turn and Bank indicator - or again, I should have put a traditional gauge in.
10) The "Highway in the Sky" is kind of silly, because in a helicopter you generally are not landing directly to a runway.
In fact, I'd say most of the value of the Chelton would be with airplane based Instrument / IFR situations. Most of the features that they describe in the video or online are directly about working in IFR situations....not relevant to me or Enstrom...as you know, the Enstroms are not certified for IFR flight at all.
All in all, the concept is sort of neat, but it is not really fleshed out far enough. I would much rather have traditional gauges and room on the panel to put in a new Garmin 696, etc.
I do like the ETE and ETA stuff and how it shows wind direction..and basically all of the gauges work fine. The speed and altitude tapes are nice.
Anyway, enough on the Chelton, I don't hate it, but I feel I could have spent my money better.
Edit..later this week the 496 is coming out and I am putting a Garmin 696 in.
Chuck