Synthetic Vision

I have had a Dynon Skyview EFIS in my airplane now with 230+ hrs of flight time and while it does look nice while flying I sometimes wonder if it really is useful or worth the extra money.

I have flew a lot of IMC approaches with it and while it does provide a really nice platform for situational awareness, I never really thought of it as a "have to have" item and still don't. However, last weekend I was presented with a problem that made this feature useful.

I was flying from Russelville, Ky to Mountain View, Mo and due to getting out of a meeting late the flight would end after night fall at the destination.  I had called ahead and talked to a local pilot there and he informed me that the last he knew only a few of the runway lights worked.  With this information I told him I would try for Mountain View but if it was to dark and I could not comfortably see the runway I would just go to West Plains because without having a precision instrument approach I may have trouble lining up with the runway.

When we arrived at the airport I was mostly looking out the window trying to locate what may look like a runway but all I could find was the reflection of a few hangars and a row of 4 vasi lights but I could not tell which side of the vasi's the runway was on.  By this time we had flown over the airport and I was back looking at the GPS moving map and planning the turn down wind based on the runway depiction on the GPS.  What I did not think about was the runway was on the EFIS (synthetic vision) before we flew over and would have provided a great way to line up with it but I had been too busy looking out the window trying to see it.

I made the turn downwind and base still fully expecting to just go back around and fly to the alternate.

I turned final and then noticed on the EFIS...right there was the runway. Man, why didn't I think of that! It was no problem then to get lined up with the runway and then fly down low enough for the landing lights to illuminate the markings.

Had a great time doing it.

 

This is a file image of the Skyview and is basically what I was seeing when I finally looked at the EFIS.

Here is some pics from out the window.

 

 

End.