ANN’s Jim Campbell talked with Dan Schwinn, President of Avidyne at the 2025 EAA AirVenture Air Show and Fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about the Vantage 12 program, which had just received FAA certification the day before.
Asked when the system will be available, Dan said they have been working on the first certified installation in a company-owned Cirrus to get all the details for that installation planned out, and the Vantage 12 will be available immediately through a small number of dealers. Production has been ramping up and availability will not be limited going forward.
Dan said it’s probably their biggest news of the year and they were really happy to be able to announce it at AirVenture.
What Vantage 12 brings to older, first generation Cirrus from about 1998 through about 2008, numbering about 4,000, is numerous improvements over the first-generation Entegra system most of them were equipped with.
Dan confirmed that Avidyne will continue its support of the Entegra systems, with no plans to discontinue support.
Improvements over the Entegra include a larger 12-inch screen over the 10-inch. The new Vantage 12 displays have smaller sides to enable the larger screen to fit inside the same size instrument panel as the 10-inch. The Vantage 12 are touch screens and are on a new hardware platform providing much faster speeds.
Vantage 12 has synthetic vision and the touch screen enables rapid changes in heading, altitude, and so on.
Another improvement is that while the older primary and multi-function displays were standalone units, the two are now continuously synchronized and the MFD can become a backup PFD. The MFD has its own AHARS that is standard at no extra cost. Additionally, both displays can drive the autopilot, providing redundancy in the event of a PFD failure.
The Vantage system is highly integrated with the IFD GPS/NAV/COM unit, which has the identical interface as other Cirrus installations with the addition of split-screen capabilities for more efficient information access.
The Vantage 12 system is designed to be easy to install, easy to transition to, and at a relatively low cost for a new set of screens. The reason for that is the installation reuses a lot of equipment already on the aircraft, including the engine data concentrator, the wing magnetometer, and the traffic system. And perhaps the biggest cost saver in terms of labor is that the installation reuses all the wiring already in the airplane.
Avidyne considers the Vantage 12 system to be a starting point for a number of innovations that are already in the works.
The cost for the two screens is $33,000, there are no options needed, though some are available such as a redundant air data computer and magnetometer. That is the retail list price, so the final cost of installation will be determined by the dealers.
The units still need a production certificate but that won’t be an issue, and Dan said he knows of several who were going to order right away with those installations beginning probably the following week.
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