B100 History

B100 History

In 1985, Dave Nadler won the USA region 1 contest, but had no working varios or computer on several days. Interestingly, the cockpit workload did not increase - the implication being the existing instruments weren't much help. This led to a research project: what would a truly useful gliding computer be like ?

Dave designed and built a proof-of-concept prototype instrument in 1987-1989, and flew this prototype in contests during 1989 including the USA 15m nationals in Uvalde. In early 1990, this instrument design was licensed to Borgelt Instruments. Dave designed the B100 computer and some of the analog components as well as part of this license, and Borgelt designed the transducers, power supplies, and packaging. While the core computer was complete in early 1990, the first commercial B100s were not shown until the SSA convention in February 1991, with customer shipments following shortly.

The B100 was a very advanced computer for its time. It was shortly seen in many competition cockpits, and was in the winning cockpit in 2 of the 3 classes the first day of the 1991 Uvalde World Championships. The user interface design proved to be extremely good at minimizing heads-down time in the cockpit, while providing the information the pilot really needs.

Unfortunately, during the production of the B100, and especially in 1994, Dave received numerous complaints about B100 hardware problems and about Borgelt Instruments customer support. Dave visited Borgelt in fall of 1994 and discussed the problems at length. The outcome of this discussion was a commitment by Borgelt to implement an agreed-upon list of production and service improvments. When this list was not implemented in the agreed time, Dave chose not to renew Nadler & Associate's agreement with Borgelt Instruments.

To provide ongoing support for the B100 product in any event where Nadler & Associates did not continue development, Borgelt Instruments agreed in their original contract with Nadler & Associates to provide a backup software developer. This contract requirement was not complied with by Borgelt.

After our agreement was not renewed, in an effort to support Borgelt's continued development of the B100 product, Dave delivered a set of sources, engineering documentation, and a detailed roadmap for learning the software to a software developer retained by Borgelt (in February 1995). Also, Nadler & Associates offered Borgelt the complete set of commercial software tools required for B100 software development at or below cost. Borgelt did not purchase the required software tools, and chose not to continue B100 development.

Production of the B100 ceased in early 1995.