Taildragon
Member
Hello Gents(and ladies),
Had my Rocket for nearly 4 years and just had a new panel installed with a new AFS 6600 along with a new Dynon autopilot. This was an upgrade from the original AFS 4500 coupled to a TruTrak DigiFlight II. The former autopilot worked surprisingly well, especially laterally, but had no altitude capture capability due to not being connected to the aircraft’s electric trim.
Previously the aircraft had an old piper blade style non-heated pitot/static blade mounted under the left wing. I opted to upgrade to the Dynon heated Pitot tube to take advantage of the AOA display possible on the AFS. The install shop decided to mount the 2 static ports just aft of the firewall abeam the leading edge of the wing midway up the side of the fuselage L and R respectively, much to my dismay.
Upon test flying I had erroneous airspeed readings higher than actual on the high end as well as considerably higher than actual on the low end. After disconnecting the static lines and venting them both inside the cabin the airspeed functionality seems mostly back to normal, but I don’t want to leave it vented inside the cabin.
Where have some of you other Rocket owners had success in mounting your static ports? Dynon install manual generally shows a diagram with them being installed on the L and R side midway back on the fuselage between the cockpit and tail section. My other option would be to add an additional drop down style pitot/static under the wing and utilize only the static portion out there. Aesthetically, I am not crazy about that idea, but I am open to other options that you may have found to work successfully on a Rocket. I do want to take full advantage of this autopilot/EFIS setup and that will require finding a good static source location externally in order to calibrate and tune this autopilot. For now the autopilot has great difficulty with all pitch modes, which I attribute at least partially to the static location.
Thank you in advance for sharing your airplanes static port location. I do fly this a/c IFR and would like things as accurate as possible.
Beau
[email protected]
Had my Rocket for nearly 4 years and just had a new panel installed with a new AFS 6600 along with a new Dynon autopilot. This was an upgrade from the original AFS 4500 coupled to a TruTrak DigiFlight II. The former autopilot worked surprisingly well, especially laterally, but had no altitude capture capability due to not being connected to the aircraft’s electric trim.
Previously the aircraft had an old piper blade style non-heated pitot/static blade mounted under the left wing. I opted to upgrade to the Dynon heated Pitot tube to take advantage of the AOA display possible on the AFS. The install shop decided to mount the 2 static ports just aft of the firewall abeam the leading edge of the wing midway up the side of the fuselage L and R respectively, much to my dismay.
Upon test flying I had erroneous airspeed readings higher than actual on the high end as well as considerably higher than actual on the low end. After disconnecting the static lines and venting them both inside the cabin the airspeed functionality seems mostly back to normal, but I don’t want to leave it vented inside the cabin.
Where have some of you other Rocket owners had success in mounting your static ports? Dynon install manual generally shows a diagram with them being installed on the L and R side midway back on the fuselage between the cockpit and tail section. My other option would be to add an additional drop down style pitot/static under the wing and utilize only the static portion out there. Aesthetically, I am not crazy about that idea, but I am open to other options that you may have found to work successfully on a Rocket. I do want to take full advantage of this autopilot/EFIS setup and that will require finding a good static source location externally in order to calibrate and tune this autopilot. For now the autopilot has great difficulty with all pitch modes, which I attribute at least partially to the static location.
Thank you in advance for sharing your airplanes static port location. I do fly this a/c IFR and would like things as accurate as possible.
Beau
[email protected]