On Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 2:10:41 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Monday, April 27, 2015 at 10:31:44 AM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:
All the recent threads on the danger of inadvertent VMC into IMC flight without proper instrumentation has highlighted what I think is a needed bit of kit for the modern glider (i.e. one that has some sort of PDA/PNA/nav display in it's cockpit: An inexpensive stand-alone AHRS module that would output continuous attitude information (pitch, roll, yaw, turn rate) which could be used by programs such as SeeYouMobile, XCsoar, and LK8000 to provide an instant-on useable attitude display, for those rare but dangerous times that a glider inadvertently gets stuck IMC (or for the Brits, when they want to do it!).

I'm thinking a nice BIG attitude screen showing pitch and roll, with a turnrate "needle/ball" at the bottom, and if possible, showing other data that the display device/software would know from other sources: airspeed, altitude, basic GPS nav info.

I would start with a basic AHRS MEMS module, add a small rechargeable battery to provide backup if the ownship power fails, and output the attitude data in NMEA via usb to the display device. Price point would be around $500 or less, and of course the software providers would need to integrate it.