Maule Driver wrote:
This month's issue has an informative, and for me timely, review of Vac
Pump options. It's time to proactively replace my Parker Hannifanb
model at annual in Dec (1,000 hours). They review 3 possible
replacements Tempest, Rapco and Aero Advantage (dual chamber). The
former 2 have wear view ports.

They didn't cover the new wet pump which had caught my eye.

The Tempest may be my choice. Any opinions?

I finally got my copy in yesterday's mail. I am disappointed in their dissing of
the Aero-Advantage dual vacuum pump. Bill, I know you're near RDU. Stop by and
take a look at my installation of the Aero-Advantage, if you'd like.

Their objections:

It's expensive:

The difference in price between the pumps they liked and the Aero-Advantage is
not that great, just a top-off or two of aviation fuel. In the scheme of prices
of aviation things, it's insignificant. In my view, you get a lot of redundancy
for the extra change. Also the price is discounted sometimes. I got mine for
$745 as an Oshkosh "show special". If it fails the cost to replace with
overhauled-exchange is competitive with standard pumps.

It doesn't have a wear inspection port:

True enough. I suppose they could choose to add one. The engineering challenges
of adding a wear inspection port don't seem insurmountable. I don't know whether
Aero-Advantage plans to add this feature, but it might be a good idea, for
marketing reasons if not for engineering reasons. Nevertheless, I don't
understand why Aviation Consumer values the wear inspection port over the
redundancy offered by the dual rotor pump.

It's bigger than a standard pump, so might not fit:

True enough. It fits my Mooney. I've read that it's a tight fit in a T210.
There's a new model coming out that's only 1/4 inch longer than a standard pump.
Check http://www.aeroadvantage.com

If one pump chamber fails, the other will probably fail soon:

OK, maybe so, but if it gets me down without me having to exercise my partial
panel skills, I'm going to replace it, so if it fails within the next 25-50
hours (as the article claims) who cares? I'm not going to fly on one pump for
25-50 hours. In the unlikely event that both chambers fail at the same time, I'm
no worse off than with a single pump.

Inconvenience of a pump failure keeping you grounded until you can get an
overhaul-exchange from Aero-Advantage:

Most buyers will have a spare pump sitting around anyway, the one they removed
when they installed the STC. In any case, Aero-Advantage claims they can
overnight an overhaul-exchange unit.

For my money, I'd rather be saying "look honey, one of the vacuum pumps just
failed, I guess we'd better land", than "look honey, the one and only vacuum
pump just failed, gee, I wish I had looked at that wear-inspection port, let's
see how I do on partial-panel".

Of course, before someone jumps on me with the obvious: partial panel recurrent
training shouldn't be neglected, dual rotor vacuum pump or not.

I have no financial connection with Aero-Advantage, I'm just a satisfied
customer who wants to see a good company with a good product succeed.

Remove SHIRT to reply directly.

Dave