The Honeywell AV8OR ACE brings full electronic flight bag compliance and GPS geo-referencing to general aviation for a price equal to about two years of paper-chart purchase — $1,999.

July 28, 2009 - Oshkosh, Wisconsin - Here’s a weight-loss program sure to appeal to pilots across the spectrum, a simple one-time treatment guaranteed to shed pounds from the flight bag, enhance useful load, and improve the mental health of the pilot: the Honeywell AV8OR ACE.

At a svelte 20 ounces—1.25 pounds— the AV8OR ACE can legally replace pounds and pounds of perishable paper products, and save the lives of trees and landfills across the country.

Introduced at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2009, the ACE appears to finally provide a low-cost solution for the typical pilot’s desire to shed the shoulder-taxing weight of the charts and plates required by the Federal Aviation Regulations— and at the same time make cyclical upgrades plus-and-download easy.

The company’s latest AV8OR product, the ACE electronic flight bag (EFB) and navigator, not only delivers all the necessary graphics information—instrument flight rules en route charts, approach plates, and visual flight rules (VFR) graphics—but does so with a form factor and price that doesn’t make the bulk of the weight lost come out of the pilot’s wallet.

It also performs with features not previously offered in EFBs below airline-level prices, including geo-referencing with all the graphics a pilot would use. With geo-referencing made possible by the WAAS-enabled GPS engine, the AV8OR ACE displays the airplane position referenced correctly on the high- and low-altitude en route charts, approach plates, and VFR navigation screens, thanks to a crisp, clean 7-inch screen.

The ACE also includes airport diagrams— again, with own-ship position. In a nod to today’s touch-control electronics, the ACE’s charts are stitched together to provide a seamless flow— along with the ability to move the chart and expand or shrink the view, with a touch of a finger.

“There’s no flipping through pages or scrolling down through menus to find what you need,” said Dan Barks, director of general aviation dealers and operators.

“And with the geo-referencing, the pilot sees the airplane progress across the en route chart or along the approach plate, SID or STAR,” he stressed. So the pilot can always see where the airplane is in reference to the selected procedure, right down to the runway.

Honeywell carried over from the original AV8OR portable multi-function display features such as Smart- Profile altitude display and Bluetooth interface—two, in the case of the ACE. Those interfaces and other wired connections also allow the ACE to display satellite datalink weather and traffic information from optional sources such as WxWorx.

ACE customers can obtain the digital charts and plates from Seattle Avionics Software; the partnership of Seattle Avionics Software and Honeywell on the ACE makes it possible to integrate the unit with the software maker’s Voyager Flight Software System to help ensure the best route for a flight.

Honeywell’s AV8OR ACE carries a suggested retail price of $1,999; a special promotion makes available either a wired or Bluetooth WxWorx receiver for $200 off the standard prices, making them $426 for the wired unit and $522.61 for the wireless model.

For more information on the ACE, check out www.BendixKing.com/AV8OR; to learn more about the Seattle Avionics products, visit www.SeattleAvionics.com/AV8OR.