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SDS EFI in 2022

rv6ejguy

Well Known Member
We finally received some of our ECU boards from the loading facility on Friday, after waiting almost 60 days so we will be getting ECUs shipped out to those who have the rest of their kits already.

This should also speed up delivery on all the orders we have in hand by allowing us to get back to our regular production procedures without the piecemeal procedure we have been using for a bunch of weeks now.

The order backlog still stands at 75-90 days.

We've had a few supply issues and have had to switch from MSD plug wire components to Taylor as the MSD wire simply dried up in Dec. Couldn't buy it anywhere. We hope to have a bunch more sometime in Feb. At least that's what they tell us.

Thanks for your patience.
 
Progress Report

We're still backlogged about 90 days, new orders replace the ones we ship out. Thanks to all the RV guys ordering. :)

Some parts shortages haven't helped here. We've stockpiled Micros, displays, magnets and fittings lately trying to stay ahead of this problem.

Work on the EM-6 is progressing. Barry is laying out the board for the SD card interface and preliminary software is working. We should progress from a breadboard to a proto board later this month to continue with interfacing tests.

With what we learn there, Barry can finally start the ECU board design and finish off the rest of the new code. Getting excited to see this in production this year.
 
Had a setback related to chip availability for the new SD board. Went from 35,000 to zero in a day so had to re-design for a different one. You never know in this business these days which is why we stockpiled other critical micros some time ago.

Billet aluminum prices continues to climb alarmingly, seeing sometimes 30% increases in the last 90 days. This doesn't affect small part prices too much but does on larger items like flywheels and rockers covers. As we exhaust our present supplies, subsequently machined parts like these will see price increases unfortunately.

On the positive side, we built a new wire stripping tool and support tower for production of Tefzel wiring harness. Wiring production has been sped up by that and especially by training another member of the team here to help build these. As such, we hope to get our lead times back down to below 30 days by the end of April as wiring production was our biggest bottleneck most of the time.

We've switched a lot of our anodizing to another shop now which is usually delivering parts in 2-3 days rather than 10-14 previously.

Our CNC shops are generally keeping up with demand these days too which makes life easier.

Testing continues on the SD proto board and that seems to be progressing well.
 
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Had a setbacks related to chip availability for the new SD board. Went from 35,000 to zero in a day so had to re-design for a different one. You never know in this business these days which is why we stockpiled other critical micros some time ago.

Billet aluminum prices continues to climb alarmingly, seeing sometimes 30% increases in the last 90 days. This doesn't affect small part prices too much but does on larger items like flywheels and rockers covers. As we exhaust our present supplies, subsequently machined parts like these will see price increases unfortunately.

On the positive side, we built a new wire stripping tool and support tower for production of Tefzel wiring harness. Wiring production has been sped up by that and especially by training another member of the team here to help build these. As such, we hope to get our lead times back down to below 30 days by the end of April as wiring production was our biggest bottleneck most of the time.

We've switched a lot of our anodizing to another shop now which is usually delivering parts in 2-3 days rather than 10-14 previously.

Our CNC shops are generally keeping up with demand these days too which makes life easier.

Testing continues on the SD proto board and that seems to be progressing well.

Thanks for the update Ross. I’ll be expecting my system soon.
 
Update

Still working on SD card software but it continues to slowly come together. This is the most time consuming part of the whole EM-6 project.

Delays in receiving aluminum billet have slowed production on rocker covers and flywheels but more are finally machining this week.

Good news is that we've cut our system lead times from around 90 days to 60 now, mainly due to having another person here building main wiring harnesses.

I haven't done any videos for about 6 months (limited time with other projects going on) but was up to Edmonton with Les last weekend assisting some other RV guys with first engine starts and tuning. Will try to put something together out of the footage I shot on that trip when I get some time in May.
 
I haven't done any videos for about 6 months (limited time with other projects going on) but was up to Edmonton with Les last weekend assisting some other RV guys with first engine starts and tuning. Will try to put something together out of the footage I shot on that trip when I get some time in May.

Now that's an option that needs to be advertised on the website.
 
Not something I can normally do. In this case, Les offered and it was a great reason not to be in the office that day. :)
 
YT Vid

Here's the promised video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi0asWF0uuo

Please forgive some of my lazy editing here.

Systems for RV-10s continue to be our best selling. We are always working on building some of these throughout the year on a continuous basis.

Just a note on Les' airplane, the TAS reads about 3-4 knots low in cruise he discovered when doing some checks.
 
Any updates on the EM-6 and closed loop operation? I am enjoying flying at high altitude and actually being able to watch my mixture change as the fuel cools off (98F on the ramp this afternoon, 25F in cruise) and the density goes up, which pushes the mixture rich and I make an adjustment.

Closed loop with an AFR target sure would be nice.... :cool:
 
Any updates on the EM-6 and closed loop operation? I am enjoying flying at high altitude and actually being able to watch my mixture change as the fuel cools off (98F on the ramp this afternoon, 25F in cruise) and the density goes up, which pushes the mixture rich and I make an adjustment.

Closed loop with an AFR target sure would be nice.... :cool:

We're still working on the SD card code. It's been very time consuming but looks like the end is sight on that (or is it?!! ). Finishing off the time stamp part this week. Hope to move onto the auto mixture control code near the end of this month. That should be a much shorter task as we did something similar back in 2007, flight tested on an RV-10 in Florida when I was down there. That worked incredibly well but only targeted one AFR for all load/ RPM ranges.

A couple more small wish list things which should be one day projects and then I am hoping a Barry will spit out a proto ECU board around the end of June. You can never tell how progress will go on these things though and R&D time is still being crushed a bit by the never ending order backlog. :):D

We are trying our best to keep up and get EM-6 done, tested and in production before the end of this year. We'll draw out lead times if we have to to accomplish this goal. It MUST get done.
 

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Any updates on the EM-6 and closed loop operation? I am enjoying flying at high altitude and actually being able to watch my mixture change as the fuel cools off (98F on the ramp this afternoon, 25F in cruise) and the density goes up, which pushes the mixture rich and I make an adjustment.

Closed loop with an AFR target sure would be nice.... :cool:

Closed loop will be nice, but won’t it require either (a) unleaded fuel or (b) an O2 sensor that can handle lead? My O2 sensor gave up in about 3 hours.
 
Closed loop will be nice, but won’t it require either (a) unleaded fuel or (b) an O2 sensor that can handle lead? My O2 sensor gave up in about 3 hours.

We've seen widely varied WB sensor life on 100LL- between about 2 and 450 hours. I have no idea why the huge variance.

The closed loop feature is mainly targeted for engines running unleaded fuels, either Mogas or the 100UL we hope is just around the corner.
 
Not around the shop most of the day. Will try to answer phone messages and email later today or on the weekend.
 
Phone and internet were down for the whole day thanks to a network outage. I'll try to get back to phone messages and emails on the weekend.
 
Osh

We won't be at Osh this year again for a variety of reasons but will have at least 2 aircraft there with full SDS EFI (RV-14A and RV-10). The owners have generously offered to talk to interested people and show their installations.

Drop me a PM or E-mail and I'll forward info and cell numbers to you to facilitate meet ups.

Any other SDS flyers who will be there are welcome to contact me as well if you're ok talking with other interested folks about SDS.

Thanks to all and I hope the weather is good and that everyone has a great time. :)
 
SDS at Oshkosh

We won't be at Osh this year again for a variety of reasons but will have at least 2 aircraft there with full SDS EFI (RV-14A and RV-10). The owners have generously offered to talk to interested people and show their installations.

Drop me a PM or E-mail and I'll forward info and cell numbers to you to facilitate meet ups.

Any other SDS flyers who will be there are welcome to contact me as well if you're ok talking with other interested folks about SDS.

Thanks to all and I hope the weather is good and that everyone has a great time. :)

I will be there with my new RV-14A from Saturday July 23rd. to Thursday July 28th. Look for me in HBC or give me a call on my US telephone number 352-454-9588 (only during OSH) so we can set up a time to meet. I will bring some tools so I can remove the cowl and some access panels to give you a good idea of what an SDS EFI/EI installation could look like.
20220710_141808-XL.jpg
 
Kyle Fowler will be performing at Oshkosh again this year in his yellow Long-Ez. He's been SDS equipped since 2019 and doing air shows all over North America. He just finished a show here at Springbank on Sunday.

Last time we talked, he had plans to do a unique night show this year if all the technology came together in time.

Kyle would be happy to discuss SDS with anyone interested. He's a super friendly guy and great ambassador for aviation. Registration is C-GZGT.
 
More at Osh...

Be sure to visit Team Rocket at Booth 645. Ray Ward has his SDS shirt on today. He has a CPI-2 in his plane.

Les Kearney's RV-10 is parked in Row 357, next to the taxiway.
 
Steve Brault has his Glastar N17L in the Glasair booth. IO-390 with SDS EFI/EI. Another owner who's happy to talk with anyone interested in SDS if you can't meet up with any of the RV guys.
 
Airventure Cup Race

Dave Anders again had the fastest RV in the race this year at 239 mph average. Good job Dave!:)
 
Thank you for all the interest shown at Osh in SDS and thanks to all our customers who took the time to talk with people and show off their installations this year.

As of Aug. 5, we've managed to cut our waiting time on EFI and CPI-2 orders down to around 30 days from the 60-90 that it's been for the last couple years.

On the EM-6 front, 99% of the code for the SD card logging is done now and we've run some multi day tests to verify operation. We've stockpiled and ordered CPU chips and components for these circuits and the ECUs as well.

Huge order backlogs, Summer vacations and taking care of elderly parents have slowed the development more than anticipated but it looks like we're on track to have a proto ECU board in our hands by early Sept. for testing and verification.
 
In the last couple weeks we've have two RV-10s and a Rocket first flight with SDS EFI. Congrats to Randy Pulis, Mark Kostick and Tim Slater. :)

We have several new SDS users heading off to Reno soon. Good luck guys!:cool:

We're happy to hear the new GAMI unleaded avgas finally making headway. This will open up more advanced control strategies for EFI in the near future.
 
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EM-6 Update

Barry has completed the new SD data logging code and has been running days long sessions testing it for glitches for almost a month now.

In the meantime, CAD work is about half done on the first prototype PCB layout.

We've been thrown a few curves and delays with regards to chip availability and have had to identify and sub in alternates which we think will have better future availability.

We made the right call stockpiling thousands of various chips over the last 2 years for this project which we thought were in danger of supply issues. Some are completely non-existent now with stated lead times of 2-3 years.

We're now going down our wish list of new features, thinking about the best control strategy for each and will be working on that code starting next week.

Things are finally progressing at a reasonable rate so good chance we'll have the proto board in hand before the end of this month and get it populated and onto testing in Oct.
 
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Biggie on the wish list for me is closed loop operation----but still with operator selected AFR. The closed loop will just compensate for the altitude changes to keep the selected AFR.

With lead free gas on the horizon, it seems like the time for this is close....
 
This is what we are working on now for aviation at the typical higher loads. We've had closed loop targeting stoich for over 25 years in the automotive market but the new strategy will allow you to select desired AFR at certain MAP points. Lower and upper limits were always user programmable in the past. We did some flight testing with 13 AFR as the target back in 2008 and that worked magically well there.

It likely won't be active at idle as this usually causes rpm hunting when the O2 sensors are located fairly far from the ports and while we'll experiment with it LOP, I expect that won't work as well as in open loop. Aircraft cruise power is set and held usually for long periods and the current LOP setup is stable and works well.

We expect to be able to use auto mixture control in taxi, takeoff and climb regimes.
 
Barry will be handling emails and phones for the next 2 days so be patient. Responses might be slower than you're used to.

On the Reno front, SDS user Andy Findlay qualified a distant 2nd to Jeff Lavelle in Sport.

RV Lee Ulrich is back in the thick of it with several other RVs close in speed. Tim Slater is in there with a Rocket.

We have a bunch of other SDS EFI and ignition users in other classes as well.

Good luck to all and safe racing.

Pray that the forest fire smoke from California stays clear. It's been really bad earlier in the week as they require at least 6 miles vis to run races.
 
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Reno SDS User Update

Lee Ulrich (RV-7) took first place in the Sport Medallion race today at Reno and Tim Slater in his Rocket took 3rd. Congrats guys!

The fast guys in Sport Class Gold apparently all had problems shortly into the race so we didn't get to see what could have been a great competition there.
 
Lee Ulrich (RV-7) took first place in the Sport Medallion race today at Reno and Tim Slater in his Rocket took 3rd. Congrats guys!

The fast guys in Sport Class Gold apparently all had problems shortly into the race so we didn't get to see what could have been a great competition there.

Yes, bummer that Jeff, Andy, and Jim all had to pull up and out. But a huge congratulations to Mathias Haid, who won in his Thunder Mustang. While it is less satisfying to win by having the really fast guys drop out, Mathias did run one of, if not the, fastest races he has ever flown. So - well done!

(Sorry, I think the Falconner V-12 in the TM uses a Motec
ECU, and would probably be better with SDS, but still, congrats are in order!)
 
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EM-6 Milestone

Today we received our first 2 proto ECU boards from Oregon. Barry will try to get it populated over the next few days and bench testing will begin immediately followed by testing in the car and then in the RV-6.

Anyway, we're pretty excited to finally be at this stage. It's been a long, hard journey writing code for the new features.

We've stockpiled a lot of chips over the last 2 years for production boards. Component supply remains one of our biggest challenges.
 
Update

Testing continues on the EM-6 board. We're refining the new closed loop and trim code as well as adding some new diagnostic code, figuring it's better to get the latter done before initial release rather than later down the road as originally planned. This may take a bit longer.

We're updating some of our billet part designs to address nonavailability of some other parts from outside suppliers that interface with them and improving some other parts through feedback from field experience. Also working on a new product applicable to RVs and other markets which I think people will find useful.

We'll try to keep system prices stable through 2023 to the best of our ability given the relentless aluminum billet price increases. Most other component costs have been reasonably stable through 2022 at least. Increased buying volume from some of our US vendors has resulted in some slightly better discounts which has been helping offset price increases elsewhere.

System delivery time is back out to around 60 days now. We have a lot of booked orders from the engine building shops stretching into the 3rd quarter of 2023 so these could impact individual order lead times from Feb. through the summer. We'll try our best to continue to hit our target dates on quotes.

Again, thanks to all present and future SDS customers. We very much appreciate being part of your projects.
 
Does sds use egt to lean mixture?

Sorry for a basic question regarding the SDSEFII system, but here goes:

A Mike Busch article explains why not to use EGT to lean LOP for Lycomings. He suggests a technique of quickly moving to LOP using CHT to avoid lingering in an air/fuel ratio that can cause high cylinder stress at higher power settings.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/january/pilot/savvy-maintenance-egt

Any thoughts on this? Do SDS EFII algorithms use CHT to avoid the “red box zone”? Is this user controllable?

Thanks for clarification.
 
SDS controls fuel flow and timing. It does have a LOP setting that once set up will quickly change the timing and fuel flow. These are user adjustable. EGT is used by the user to establish that your LOP since it changes with fuel flow so quickly. Once LOP using EGT you can trim (if you have the option installed) the fuel flow for each cylinder to match CHTs if you’d like.

I set up my SDS for LOP at 7500’. This is done while test flying the plane since each installation might be slightly different. My setup uses WOT, push the LOP button then it automatically goes to 29 degrees BTDC and -28% fuel flow. This happens very quickly which avoids lingering in the red box. Then I make minor adjustments using the mixture knob to get it around 30* LOP.

It’s a great system!
 
Once you’re under about 60% power, the red box goes away. I basically use RPM’s to go LOP. As an example, I take off and climb out at around 2400-2500 RPM at 700 FPM ROP. During this time my fuel flow (i.e. how much ROP I am) is dictated by CHT’s, which I keep 400*f or less during climb out. Once I’m at cruse altitude I’m typically making less than 60% power at full throttle. Once leveled out I do a quick pull of the prop to 2200 RPM….this is typically the RPM’s I cruse at. Before even touching the mixture my CHT’s go from ROP to peak, to LOP simply by decreasing FF by reducing RPM’s. From this point I only have to make minor adjustments of the mixture to get the FF right where I want it. The main takeaway from all of this is that once you’re below about 60% power, you really can’t hurt anything, even if running right at peak. SDS makes a really nice system and gives you the ability to tweak/adjust your fuel and ignition system perfectly.
 
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As Jeff said, SDS can avoid the manual leaning part to go LOP. Press the LOP button on the programmer and you're done once it's set up right. It can simultaneously advance timing a few degrees to minimize the power loss with the slower burning lean mixture.

Easy Peasy.
 

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Thanks everyone for your quick replies. I will study up more on the SDS system as I am expecting my Aerosport IO360 that I purchased with the SDS EFII to be built in March. I have much to learn about how it operates!
 
I have much to learn about how it operates!

Aint that the truth.

From my personal experience, the more capabilities a system has, the harder it is to learn.

I suggest you write down the base line settings prior to making any changes, so you can return to them if needed.

I would suggest you have an oxygen sensor bung installed in the exhaust system, really helps to set up the fuel curve.
 
2022 was another great year for us thanks to the many folks here on VAF and elsewhere who supported SDS. We very much appreciate people selecting SDS for their new builds and updates to already finished RVs. Thank you for all the great building/ flying stories and feedback. It's all welcome and keeps this job interesting and helps us improve the products. You'll see some new products and updated parts come out in 2023 as a result.

We'll be ordering production EM-6 PCBs and the rest of the parts we don't already have next month to hopefully load them in mid to late Feb. Barry is still tweaking the code and adding some additional diagnostics.

Delivery on orders are backlogged into Feb. at this time.

We'll be closed Dec. 30 for inventory, open again Jan. 2.

Happy New Years and the best of health and happy building/ flying in 2023.:)
 
Happy New Year, Ross and Barry!

2022 was another great year for us thanks to the many folks here on VAF and elsewhere who supported SDS. We very much appreciate people selecting SDS for their new builds and updates to already finished RVs. Thank you for all the great building/ flying stories and feedback. It's all welcome and keeps this job interesting and helps us improve the products. You'll see some new products and updated parts come out in 2023 as a result.

We'll be ordering production EM-6 PCBs and the rest of the parts we don't already have next month to hopefully load them in mid to late Feb. Barry is still tweaking the code and adding some additional diagnostics.

Delivery on orders are backlogged into Feb. at this time.

We'll be closed Dec. 30 for inventory, open again Jan. 2.

Happy New Years and the best of health and happy building/ flying in 2023.:)
 
Ross and Barry,
Thanks for such a dependable system for the past 6+ years and all the helpful guidance. I still love this system.
 
Ross and Barry,
Thanks for such a dependable system for the past 6+ years and all the helpful guidance. I still love this system.

Thank you for all your feedback and insights into the mods and work on your RV-4. Very impressive performance. A Venture guy on another forum couldn't believe the numbers for an RV until he found out it was yours...:)

Looking forward to what you and Tim come up with for Reno. Great working with both of you guys!
 
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