Sandel SG-102 AHRS

[sycamore]

Anyone fitted one of these in place of old gyro systems,or in glass cockpits,particularly aerobatic aircraft..? Comments good/bad/reliable,etc,please ?

[wigglyamp]

Fitted one in a Bell 407 to replace a KG102a and get digital output to allow traffic to display on GNS530. Worked well - only problem is it will not restart in flight if power is interrupted.

[peterh337]

I looked at this a year ago.

It indeed will not do an "air restart" officially (a shortcoming common to all pure solid state gyro implementations, which don't know which way is "up"; a shortcoming which the panel mounted boxes like G500 or Aspen solve by feeding in GPS data or airdata and making various assumptions based on that) but in practice, I gather, it does restart OK if you are flying the right way up and smoothly when you power it up.

Which makes sense :)

BTW you need to also replace the KMT112 fluxgate magnetometer with the Sandel version.

The real advantage, IMHO, of the SG102 (over leaving the old KG102A in place) is to get the "reversionary AI" mode on the SN3500 EHSI. It is a very slick feature, but in reality any half decent IFR tourer will already have a backup electric AI, etc, and you then don't want to turn your EHSI into an AI.

Now, if you could drive a Honeywell autopilot like the KFC225 from the SG102, that would be something else, but good luck with the paperwork :)

Reading your question, however, I don't think it makes sense because you are not going to have a slaved compass system in an aerobatic aircraft....

Re reliability, the installed base is too small, and getting smaller as almost anybody with money to burn is throwing in Aspens or G500s :) Sandel make great products but they are just not "sexy".

[wigglyamp]

List price of a KCS55A is just over US $20K so it's definitely better to buy an Aspen or Garmin EFIS. Garmin G500 takes a bit more labour but is great to use.