local 2008 or newer near me?

[Colin]

Whenever you are thinking of a business idea for aviation remember how small the market is. If you scare $10 out of every certificated pilot in the United States you would do a lot better than AOPA does and you've still got only $3m in revenue. Pilots are price sensitive and are only going to fork over $10 if they feel they are getting at least $12 in value for it.

My G1000 has flown 1,600 hours and has had two in-air reboots. Neither was a major event. In both instances the PFD failed over to the MFD and if I was IMC I'd have been a long way from SOL. When I was working on my instrument rating my CFII kept drilling into me that if the screens went south on an instrument approach I was to instantly fly the missed approach or, at the very least, climb and communicate, if I didn't have the information to do something better.

I don't really fly hard IMC, though. If I did I think I'd have a Stratus II and Foreflight running all the time.

[Chris B]

Whenever you are thinking of a business idea for aviation remember how small the market is.

Yep. And the very large certification expenses must be amortized across small unit volumes. IMO, this (plus having to essentially make a lifetime buy of parts for the first production run ) drives the crazy differential between certified and "experimental" equipment.

My G1000 has flown 1,600 hours and has had two in-air reboots. Neither was a major event. In both instances the PFD failed over to the MFD and if I was IMC I'd have been a long way from SOL. When I was working on my instrument rating my CFII kept drilling into me that if the screens went south on an instrument approach I was to instantly fly the missed approach or, at the very least, climb and communicate, if I didn't have the information to do something better.

My G1000 has flown ~800 hrs without a hiccup. Compared to every other computing device in my experience, this is remarkable. It still sometimes does things that I don't expect, but that is a pilot issue.

FWIW, my CFII (now DPE) repeatedly stressed that if the fancy glass stuff glitches, use whatever is left to climb ASAP on the missed. And if there isn't an obvious explanation with a simple fix (e.g., stupid pilot trick), declare an emergency and find someplace VFR. Whenever we practiced partial panel approaches, the session was prefaced with: "Only do this if you have no other option."

I don't really fly hard IMC, though. If I did I think I'd have a Stratus II and Foreflight running all the time.

I don't know if close-to-LPV-minimums in coastal or valley fog counts as "hard" IMC, but I do this regularly. However without synthetic vision & TAWS, I - personally - wouldn't shoot low approaches. My error rate is not sufficiently close to 0%.

Having the green ball centered on the approach end of the runway is an amazing stress reducer.

Chris

[rwtucker]

I agree with what Colin & Chris are saying (except the value proposition for an aviation parts & service clearinghouse -- but that is another conversation). However, against these one-off positive reports, we also have many drivers like me who experienced substantial failures, reboots, lockups, the Big Red 'X', shorted coaxial cable, faded monitors, etc. early on. I don't know what the MTBF is for G1000 functionality but a wild guess is that it is less than 2,000 hours, maybe 1,000. Whether this seems good or bad depends on expectations.

[Colin]

Coastal and valley fog is, to me, light IFR. Hard IFR are the folks that take off into it, spend most of the flight there, and fly and approach to minimums. I don't do that, don't plan on it, and I'm not sure you could pay me to do it.

The longest I've spent IMC was ninety minutes as I departed St. Louis. I found it *very* stressful, even with the G1000 and knowing the METAR at every airport in gliding distances as I climbed to cruise. I was extremely happy to pop out at 10,000 feet to see the sun.

It might be different if I had another engine and, in some circumstances, some ice protection.