System Designed For The Sport And Bush Pilot

By Tom Patton

Imagine climbing into an airplane, and rather than a traditional instrument panel, you're faced with a single screen on which all of the pertinent flight information can be displayed. That is the concept behind the Unpanel developed by Avilution.

The Unpanel is being displayed at AirVenture in a Zenith CH750 Super STOL airplane, in part because it is designed with recreational flying in mind. "We approached Zenith ... and said 'OK, Blue Sky, tell us about what you'd like to see' and between the two of us, we came up with different ideas about an approach that took advantage and leveraged all this technology that's available, to just dispense with everything that everybody's just inherited about airplanes and said 'if you could make an ideal interface for this kind of flying ... what would it look like?'" said Mark Spencer, founder of Avilution.

Spencer said that Avilution approaches avionics as a software problem rather than as a hardware problem, which gives them a lot of flexibility and allows them to bring products to market more quickly than might a more traditional approach.

The Unpanel groups basic flight information such as airspeed, altitude, heading and angle of attack at the top of the panel. Below that are engine instruments and AHRS, and the bottom half of the 17" screen is devoted to moving maps and navigation. Communications are also included in the interface, with everything controlled by touchscreens or mechanical buttons around the outside of the screen. "The target customer needs something to get the information from right away, and the information they need is not going to be a bunch of GPS waypoints cluttering the screen. That was more of the focus about what made this a challenge and an opportunity."

The configuration in the Zenith CH750 gives the cockpit an almost helicopter-like appearance.

The Unpanel will cost $11,995 for the complete package, Spencer said. He hopes to be shipping Unpanels at the end of 2017. The unit is currently configured for the Zenith airplane, but Spencer said that he is open to working with other manufacturers to make the product available for other aircraft.

(Staff image)

FMI: www.avilution.com