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[April 5, 2017]


We woke up on Tuesday to a beautiful morning sunrise.


Not too many airplanes in HBC - 15 airplanes.


The SNF media hospitality was second to none. Great breakfast in the morning during the 8:15am press briefing.


This is Mary Jane's palace for the week. It should be twice as big for all the work her and her team put in! Mary Jane was quite accommodating to Peter and myself when it came to using her golf carts throughout the week. I'm certain it's because she was fearful of the possibility of bad press ;-)


The HBC tent was nicely upgraded this year. Last year it wasn't as big.


Some RV builders from Switzerland stopped by and chatted about their project.


Steve (RV-9A) and Gus from Albany were our neighbors this year. We met them last year at SNF and really clicked. Gus was a real charmer. When we were hungry and waiting for dinner, Gus was the only person Mary Jane offered a roast beef sandwich to!


This line of storms (Radar from 9:22am) was going to keep a good number of people from flying into SNF.



Stopped by Van's to congratulate Mitch Lock on his new position at Van's....I also thanked him for leading the way through the storms yesterday.


Chatted with Lucas at TruTrak about an Arinc issue I am having between their Vizion 385 AP and my GRT EFIS. They are always great guys to work with and very willing to help out.


Peter was complaining about how uncomfortable my seats were. I took a load off in the best RV seats money can buy!


Chatted with Mike at Dynon about their new ADS-B receiver. I wanted to know if it was a standard GDL-90 protocol output, but he indicated it was proprietary.


US Customs and Border Patrol always has some kickass boats at SNF.


The uAvionix booth was quite busy on the first day. They've got a lot of great ADS-B receivers, transmitters and transceivers.


This was their new release - the echo ESX (I believe it was $1600). It is a ADS-B out device with extended squitter (ES) support. It can be controller by a number of different EFIS's. It does require a separate 2020 compliant GPS - they have their own, but the GRT 2020 GPS also works with their product. The only let down for me was this wasn't an ADS-B IN device.


The Echo UAT from uAvoniX is an ADS-B transceiver (non-ES) which is compatible with bunch of EFIS manufacturers. It features both ADS-B in and out, and the IN traffic and weather (GDL90) can be transmitted either over a serial connection and Wifi. They had a great demo setup displaying live traffic coming into SNF. It's great that a small innovative company has entered into the ADS-B space for experimentals. I can easily see myself switching to their product and gaining some panel space as I will not longer require a GTX-327.


Great group of people working at uAvionx. Glad to see someone finally stepped up to make an affordable In/Out solution for us experimentals now that NavWorx's future is somewhat unknown.


Chatted with PS Engineering and bragged to them about how much I love the new PDA360EX audio panel I just installed. They let me in on a fun secret - the PDA stands for "Paul Dye's Audiopanel". Apparently Paul worked closely with PS Engineering on the user interface and other aspects of the panel. I guess I owe you a thanks also, Paul...Awesome product and great UI!


Next up was Garmin to check out their new touch G3X. It took a couple of pictures for Peter to really have his modeling side shine! These are really nice screens...my only complaint is the bezel is quite thick around the perimeter. However, it's a great upgrade option for all of those legacy G3X's out there.


The 7" G3X Touch is probably one of the nicest EFIS's out there. it has excellent use of the screen real-estate.


Garmin is quite innovative in many ways. IO was impressed with how you can mount their GDU 25 ADAHRS right behind the screen.


I caught up with GRT's Greg Toman and checked out their new products - spefically their Safe-Fly 2020 GPS. I also chatted to him about the uAvionx ADS-B transceivers and if they worked with the older GRT EFIS. He said they have software in the works to be able to control the uAvionix devices from the older Sport EFIS. Wow, what other EFIS could I have purchased in 2008 that still gets updates to support new products. Can't say enough good about this great company.


Their Fly-Safe 2020 GPS receiver and Serial Combiner is amazingly small and lightweight.


I also saw a product from GRT I wasn't aware of - this is a Quad Serial port expander to add serial ports to their EFIS's.


Super thin and well designed.


I picked up a sweet Flight Outfitters flight bag (the "Thrust") from Duane at Spencer Aircraft. Duane's always great to see and deal with. He get's an A for customer service - he threw in 2 free t-shirts! Spencer seems to expanded their product offerings every year. They're one of my top go-to site's when I'm finding myself with too much money in my airplane fund.


This is where the media pass to SNF really shined - members of the SNF media can call up the press office and have a golf cart sent to take you to anywhere ont he ground. This really helped out Peter and I cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time to get to all the vendors and events.


Cruising in style around SNF. There's no better way to get around!


Back at HBC we found 4 new arrivals before the airshow started.


This was definitely the most impressive homebuilt in HBC - the Rutan Defiant. Four seats with two engines in a push/pull configuration. The builder, John Loofbourrow, has over flight 1200 hours on this 175kts cruiser! Somewhere around 20 Defiant's have been completed since the plans were released in 1984.


The details of the defiant.


Taking a load off in HBC with my new buddy "Slugger".


The French National Team, Patrouille de France, really stole the show. Neither Peter or I are much for airshows, but the this performance wow'd us. It was their first US appearance in more than 30 years. It's too bad they only did one show and then took off afterwards.



You can tell from Peter's expression he is enamoured with their performance.








After the french team was finished, Mary Jane and Stephanie started to get HBC party started!


After many beers and margarita's, we heard the sound of some music coming from the east. We headed down to the Tailwheels, Inc party. Great live music, food, beer and conversation was to be had!

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