The Avidyne DFC90 - General Introduction

The Avidyne DFC90: Another Big Step for Increasing Safety and Utility

Last week was very exciting for Avidyne with the announcements we made at AOPA.  We have continued to focus on our customers’ needs and adapting our products for the current market conditions.  We made announcements about our EX600 MFD product that continues to lead the market for aftermarket MFD functionality, the DFC90 digital autopilot that allows release 7 Entegra customers to upgrade their aircraft, and we also announced the Envelope Protection capabilities of the DFC90 and DFC100 autopilots. 

The DFC90 project is important to us for many reasons: first, it allows us to create a continuum of upgrade possibilities for all of our customers in a wide range of price points.  Second, it is going to provide a lot of value to our customers with a relatively low investment of money and time.  Third, we are going to increase safety and utility for our customer base.

You can get all the details on the DFC90 by clicking the link above to our press release.  I wanted to share with you my personal experience flying with the DFC90 over the past month.  I don’t have much time flying in a Cirrus and even less time flying with the 55x engaged, but I have heard from a lot of our customers that they would like more out of their autopilot.  The DFC90 and DFC100 will absolutely provide that to our customers, and we should have some PIREPS from non-Avidyne employees in the coming weeks.

As a 100-hour pilot, I can appreciate the “Straight-and-Level” functionality and the envelope protection capabilities.  I flew with Steve Jacobson, VP of Product Management, last week, and he put the DFC90 through the demonstration profile.  We did unusual attitude tests of 30⁰ pitch up / down and 60 degrees of bank.  With the push of a button the aircraft smoothly regained controlled flight quickly and efficiently.  He then demonstrated our Envelope Protection functionality where we commanded a VS climb rate of 500 FPM and we pulled back power.  The PFD annunciated that we were in an “Underspeed” situation, and the aircraft gently reduced the climb rate, adjusting VS in concert with the ability for the aircraft to climb. When a climb was no longer possible and the airspeed dropped it sacrificed altitude for airspeed and kept us well above a stall and we eventually started to descend.  This feature provides a tremendous level of safety for our turbo-equipped pilots that are in the flight levels.  There have been some unfortunate fatalities caused by hypoxia that our envelope protection could have prevented.  In a situation where the pilot is incapacitated due to hypoxia the one tank would run out of fuel, the engine would stop, envelope protection would prioritize airspeed over altitude hold, and the plane would start a descent.  If someone was at FL250 it would take about 11 minutes to descend to 14,000 feet and hopefully the pilot would start to regain consciousness.  They would then have another 10+ minutes to either restart the engine using the other tank of fuel or pull the chute.  I think this can be a game changer for those of you with turbo-equipped aircraft that want another layer of safety and redundancy when trying to get more utility from the aircraft in the flight levels.

The other aspect of this program that is exciting is the ease with which someone can upgrade to the DFC90.  First, it requires a hardware and software mod to the PFD.  In order to decrease downtime, we will do this upgrade using our advanced-exchange system, so the PFD swap can be done in a couple of hours.  Once the PFD 8.0 is in the airplane, the upgrade is as simple as removing the 55x control head with an allen wrench and then replacing it with the DFC90 control head.  During our test flight last week it took us 90 seconds to swap control heads and get the full system up and running in between ILS landings on runway 29 at KBED.   That was impressive and proved to me that this can be an easy upgrade for our Entegra customers.