On Friday, August 30, 2013 3:53:20 PM UTC-7, waremark wrote:
On Wednesday, 28 August 2013 01:59:06 UTC+1, wrote:

Hello



The Butterfly vario was advertise has a revolution, well almost, on the market.



Is there any pilots using the Butterfly vario who care to comment on the advantages,if any, of this instrument? I am serously interested in acquiring



one but it as to be better than my LX 7000.



Thanks for your input.



Gilles



For balance against all the enthusiasm for Clearnav and Butterfly, I would just like to say that I am using an LX 9000 (with V5 and AHRS) and find it superb. I am surprised that anyone would consider using any other vario than the V5 or V9 with the LX 9000 main unit. The LX 9000 voice system is very clear and I find it quite fun, but I am not sure that it adds much. I have turned off the voice warnings of Flarm traffic - I was getting far too many voice 'warnings' for non-conflicting traffic, and I find it better just to get an urgent beep for possible collision threats (I have a Butterfly display on all the time, and traffic also shows on the LX 9000 moving map).



At my club everyone with newish varios has been buying LX Navs, no Clearnavs or Butterflys.



I am not sure how we are going to know whether pilots with any one of these systems climb better than pilots with the others. And the infinite setup variations which they all offer will make it even more difficult to know whether one is better than the others. I must admit that even though I say the LX 9000 is superb, from the point of view of the vario alone I am perfectly happy with the 15 plus year old L Navs which we have in some of our club gliders.



Meanwhile, as a pure vario the Butterfly is far more expensive than the rivals - although it is reasonably good value if you also need an artificial horizon and an IGC logger. The navigation and flarm features seem too limited to be of relevance, and the back seat repeater is particularly expensive.

You will get no voice warnings from the Butterfly for non-conflicting traffic - only for the same ones that would cause a warning on the Flarm display.. The only voice warnings on it I ignore are the "Spoilers Open" ones that I get when taxiing with the motor running. As far as value goes, the red and green pellet varios worked pretty well. Anything else is gravy, and you pay a bit for each feature you get. Considered historically, you can still buy a CAI 302/303 combo for $2835 or an SN10 for $3655 - that makes the Butterfly look like a pretty good value. But certainly if all you want is a basic vario there are far cheaper ways to go - even than the V5.