Honeywell introduced at AirVenture its AV8OR ACE, a new 7-inch touch screen handheld Global Positioning System (GPS).
The Bendix/King by Honeywell AV8OR ACE, offered at introductory price of $1,999, provides geo-referenced FAA charts, eliminating the need for general aviation pilots to carry paper charts, according to company officials.
“The AV8OR ACE is able to display your airplane directly on High/Low Enroute Charts, Approach Plates and Airport Diagrams to increase situational awareness,” said Chad Cundiff, vice president, crew interface systems marketing & product management at Honeywell. “AV8OR ACE customers can obtain digital charts and approach plates from Seattle Avionics Software, a leading provider of aviation software, and the unit integrates smoothly with the popular Voyager Flight Software System to ensure the safest, most efficient route. Over time, we expect to provide our customers with additional charting options.”
“We’re very excited to provide our exclusive seamless IFR charts to the AV8OR ACE,” said Steve Podradchik, CEO of Seattle Avionics. “With these charts, pilots can fly from one end of the country to the other with what looks like one country-sized Low Altitude or High Altitude chart. Pilots don’t have to flip charts as they fly, significantly increasing ease of use and safety.”
The AV8OR ACE includes all of the same capability found in the AV8OR handheld, including a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) GPS, automotive navigation, regional databases, airport information services including fuel pricing and interfaces for traffic and weather. The airport services data is from Flight Guide, the industry standard in general aviation for almost 50 years. The weather interface supports WxWorx, one of the nation’s largest XM Satellite Weather data providers.
For more information: BendixKing.com/AV8OR or SeattleAvionics.com/AV8OR.
The ACE is indeed a nice unit considering it is the 1.0 version. A couple things it lacks are the fact that the airport database does not tell you what the traffic pattern is for the runways. That’s important and if you have to take along another piece of paper to tell you that information, then you’re not “paperless”. The good thing is that the program exists on a memory card so updates will be easy to distribute when the happen.
The Great thing is the geo referenced plates. Some have complained that the screen is not quite large enough, but for me, I have used it to shoot approaches and though I was not relying on the unit for primary navigation, being able to glance down and see your airplane on the plate right where you figured you should be adds a little more comfort when surrounded by clouds.
I look forward to the next revision of firmware and hope Bendix makes a few improvements.
Next May, my wife and I are planning on flying in Australia (Sydney to Perth.) We plan on purchasing the Pacific update for the AV8TOR and were wondering if this update would also be for the go drive function? If not, please advise.
Thanks,
Will