MGL Avionics User Forum

When will the new iEFIS challenger light be available? I need one ASAP.

They are available for ordering and we are producing. These are the G4 systems.
We are still holding shipping pending completion of tests but that should be out of the way next week.

Are you now shipping?

Yes we have started shipping back orders.

Busy with new manuals and website update.

Apologies for the delay. Reason was that we ran out of G3 CPU boards much sooner than expected due to higher demand. The idea was to first release the MX2 which is a native G4 system (in other words never was a G3) and then phase in the G4 for the other EFIS systems.
But we ran out and could not find one of the required chips (it was discontinued some time ago) and also the CPU chip we used on the G3 has become extremely expensive. So making another batch was sadly out of the question.
So I had to scramble to get the G4 CPU board to work on the G3 systems sooner than planned and delay the MX2 even more - even though the MX2 is completely finished - but now the G4 boards have to be diverted until we get the next G4 batch in (hopefully soon).

Anyway - after some weekend work and burning the midnight oil the G4 is working nicely on the former G3 devices. For the most part the additional work was required in order for the G4 EFIS software to work with the G3 generation hardware - writing of device drivers - that kind of thing. Takes longer than one thinks...

In the meantime the G4 EFIS software has also progressed with even more functionality - mostly related to the new built in screen designer. This actually started very humble but has continued to morph into a full fledged screen designer that can do everything you can currently do on the PC based simulator/screen designer including changing/editing the built in screens to your hearts content right there on the EFIS.
One of the major concepts introduced which is proving its usefulness is the concept of modules. You could make modules with the G3 already - but now this is much enhanced. Modules are groups of screen components - for example consider the typical altimeter tape that is made up of several individual items - background, tape, numeric readouts and some graphical components, touch fields etc. So that is now a module - just one item to place and move around. The EFIS has already got a growing library of these modules built in that you can use - in the last few days further work on the screen designer has now added the ability to edit those built in modules and you can create your own modules too.
It's quite a game changer as far as screen designs are concerned.

A lot of less visible work has also happened - for example you can now connect a "lite" EFIS to Microsoft's flight simulator - previously that was only possible with an iBOX based system.