I’ve had my Skydemon MD for a week now and I thought I’d post my thoughts on it and suggestions for improvements. Overall it’s a great piece of kit. It integrates with Skydemon Plan seamlessly and I like the configurable airspace, obstruction and terrain warnings. Having NOTAMs displayed on screen is great and it’s invaluable if you suddenly have to divert. I’m not aware of any other gps that displays NOTAMs. I can vouch for the 4 hour battery life. After 3 h 48 min I got the 20% battery warning, and after 4 hours and 5 min it was still running, but I decided to stop the test at that point and charge it up. Now for the not-so-good and suggested improvements:



1.   The screen brightness is still not quite bright enough. I used it in a Firefly yesterday on a bright sunny day. I had it mounted so that it was just to the left of the instrument panel, just below the level of the DI, angled upwards towards my face. It wasn’t too bad with the sun ahead, but on the return flight with the sun behind the screen got really washed out. I could still make out the magenta line, but I couldn’t see the mini-HSI or the data boxes on the left. In full HSI instrument mode I couldn’t see the heading bug. I had my Garmin III GPS mounted on the dash and its black-and-white screen was still crystal clear. I will play around with different positioning next time, but the curved canopy makes suction-mounted options limited. Suggested improvement: have an option to make the data boxes (GS, ETA, etc) on the left bigger and the map smaller. Interestingly, on my Garmin III which only has a 2.75” screen the data boxes are larger than on the Skydemon MD. Also, I would like the option of displaying the fly left/right box (‘Course Correction Indicator’) bigger. These changes would all help in bright sunlight conditions.



2.   I was initially disappointed with the screen resolution. I played around with the demo version in Plan for a while and I was expecting the screen resolution on the actual MD to be the same, but it’s not. It’s more pixelated on the actual unit. The screenshots you see in the ads and on the skydemon website are misleading. But after the initial disappointment I’ve got used to it.



3.   I was also initially disappointed by the touch-screen technology. Having used an iphone quite a bit I was expecting similar sensitivity, but I think the MD uses older generation touch-screen technology that relies on pressure. It takes some getting used to but I’m getting the hang of it and it’s no longer a big issue. Using the back of your nail to scroll works better than using your finger.



4.   In route view the font size of the distance and track is far too small. There’s plenty of space on this screen to make them bigger so this should be a simple fix.



5.   I had the HSI set to give me an ILS with a 3 deg glideslope but it didn’t work flying into Sandown. It didn’t even display the localiser guidance and I couldn’t really troubleshoot it while flying the approach.



6.   On approach to Old Sarum the MD lost its ‘precision fix’ so the aircraft symbol disappeared. I was surprised by this. The unit had a very good view of the sky. I see that I have the option of turning off the ‘precision fix’ but what are the consequences of this? What is the accuracy with ‘precision fix’ turned off?



7.   After the flight I downloaded my tracks into Plan and it was nice to see the vertical profile as well as the track profile. It would be nice to have the option of clicking on the track to see the groundspeed and altitude at any particular point, like you can in Memory Map.



8.   It would be nice to have a simulator mode built-in to the MD. The simulator in Plan is not entirely representative of the MD.



9.   The MD needs a protective case. I’m going to go shopping for one today.



So overall it’s a nice bit of kit, but it suffers in bright sunlight. Having the option of making certain fields bigger should help to alleviate the problem.