I've been on the road for over a week, and just got back this afternoon.

My original plan was to have conventional gyros, albeit electrically powered, rather than the usual vacuum powered. However, several companies are trying to break into the market with low cost solid-state "gyros" that drive LCD displays. These solid-state "gyros" use a combination of accelerometers and rate meters and a microprocessor to calculate the aircraft's attitude. The technology has been used in Attitude and Heading Reference Systems (AHRS) in business jets and regional airliners for many years, but those systems are way too expensive for general aviation aircraft. Now there are lower cost systems available from Blue Mountain Avionics, Grand Rapids Technologies and Dynon Development. And Crossbow has a low-cost AHRS that can drive an attitude indicator display on a Compaq PDA.

The Dynon D-10 EFIS (Electronic Flight Information system) has me very tempted. I can just barely fit it into my current panel layout, but I would probably buy a new panel blank and start over, as I would no longer need the removable centre section for the gyros. I would keep my conventional airspeed, altimeter and VSI, so that I could still fly partial panel if the Dynon EFIS died. I probably wouldn't enable all the optional display items that are shown in this image, as that seems to make for an overly busy display.

I have read reports from several early purchasers who have the Dynon D-10 flying - everyone is happy, and no one has any major gripes. I need to get answers to quite a few questions from Dynon, and I need to get a flight in an aircraft with this system, plus do a night evaluation on the ground. If I still like the unit after that, I might send them some money.