From Garmin’s latest offerings comes the GTC 580, a new touchscreen controller option for the G2000, G3000 and G5000 integrated flight decks. The high-resolution landscape display adds standby flight display capabilities while using the same GTC 570 interface that provides full flight deck management control, such as flight planning, radio and audio management, and weather systems control.

The GTC 580’s SFD offers flight attitude information, airspeed, barometric altitude and heading information. The screen comes in a 5.8-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) and 1280 x 768 resolution. It also boasts an infrared touchscreen making it faster and more responsive and can even be used with gloves.

In conjunction with GTC 580’s launch, Cirrus Aircraft announced the Cirrus Perspective Touch by Garmin for their Vision SF50 Jet. Specifically designed for the new personal jet, the touchscreen-based flight deck features three of the GTC 580 touchscreen controllers under the PFD and MFD.

Check out garmin.com/aviation for more information.

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Major airworthiness directives related to aircraft systems aren’t all that uncommon, but a new AD issued by the FAA yesterday that calls for the replacement of the primary flight displays in certain Boeing 737 and 777 airliners raises eyebrows not just for what must be replaced but also the reason why.

The FAA on October 1 posted AD 2014-20-06 related to all Boeing 737-600, -700, -700C, -800, -900, and -900ER series airplanes and 777 airplanes with Phase 3 Honeywell displays. The directive was prompted by testing reports on certain Honeywell PFDs that exhibited susceptibility to radio interference from Wi-Fi frequency bands.

The FAA says Wi-Fi signal interference could cause a dangerous loss of display information. More and more airliners are being equipped with Wi-Fi as a means for passengers to stay connected in flight. Signals from onboard Wi-Fi equipment are typically benign, not causing interference with the avionics in most cases. It is not known at this time exactly how the Wi-Fi interferes with the displays.

According to the AD summary, the Honeywell Phase 3 primary flight displays must be replaced with Phase 1, Phase 2 or Phase 3A display units, and for certain replacements, new database software must be installed as well.

The AD affects around 1,300 airplanes in all.

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Robinson Helicopter Co. is introducing glass cockpit choices for the R22, R44 and R66 models based around an Aspen Avionics EFIS package paired with optional Garmin GTN 600/700 touch-screen navigators.

The basic cockpit includes an Aspen primary flight display and multifunction display that interface with several optional components, including Garmin GTR 225B comm radio, GMA 350H audio panel, GDL 88 universal access transceiver (UAT) and GTX 330ES transponder.

The GTX 330ES transponder is designed to meet ADS-B Out equipment requirements when paired with a GTN series navigator, and the GDL 88 UAT provides dual-band ADS-B In for receiving traffic and weather information. The GTN series navigators are installed in Robinson’s pilot side console, placing the equipment directly in front of the pilot to minimize head-down time.

Robinson says it has completed FAA flight tests and received approval for most of the new equipment. The helicopter maker is in the final stages of certification for a few remaining combinations, it says. Traditional instruments will continue to be offered across the model range.

The new avionics will be on display at Robinson’s booth at Heli-Expo, February 25-27 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.

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Kestrel Aircraft’s CEO and president Alan Klapmeier and the company’s COO and executive vice president of product development Steve Serfling provided an update to the media on the Kestrel single-engine turboprop project in a press conference at AirVenture. Klapmeier said he had hoped to be able to announce full funding for the Kestrel turboprop program at the show, a program he said requires approximately $175 million, but some promising deals that he had hoped to close last week did not come through.

Klapmeier said the schedule for first delivery is likely to slip from 2015 to 2016. “A year from now, assuming that the funding happens, we should have a conforming prototype,” Klapmeier said. While the lack of funding may be holding back the progress of the program, Serfling said 85 percent of the suppliers for the airplane are now under contract.

The big announcement from Kestrel this week was the selection of Garmin’s G3000 touchscreen-controlled integrated avionics system. “One of the beauties of Garmin is that it can fully integrate with the airplane,” said Serfling. Kestrel’s G3000 will feature at least two 14-inch PFD and MFD screens, a three-axis autopilot, Garmin ESP (Electronic Stability and Protection), dual WAAS GPS and AHRS, SafeTaxi and electronic charts and checklists.

While the commitment has now been made for the G3000 panel, Klapmeier said another system will likely also be offered. “I believe competition is essential to reducing cost or at least controlling cost and driving innovation,” Klapmeier said.

Despite the fact that progress has been made on the program, “we are not taking orders,” Klapmeier said. He said early orders from speculative buyers “confuse the market and confuse the company. There is no real advantage to that.” Kestrel will likely not take orders until the conforming prototype has flown.

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Flight Design’s new C4 four-seater will come equipped with a Garmin glass panel, Flight Design announced at Oshkosh this week. While complete details of the avionics deal have not been announced, Garmin and Flight Design hinted that features such as angle of attack, dual air data heading reference system and synthetic vision will all be included in the package. Garmin reps also said the airplane will be equipped with an integrated autopilot that can return the C4 to straight and level flight with just one button touch.

First unveiled in 2010, the C4 is an all-carbon composite airplane that builds off of Flight Design’s popular line of CT airplanes. The C4 will come equipped with the Continental IO-360AF engine, as well as a full airplane parachute system. The target price for the airplane is currently set at $250,000.

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The twin-engine Seminole is the latest of Piper’s offerings to receive type certificate approval from the FAA for the integrated Garmin G1000 avionics system. G1000-equipped Seminoles are expected to start rolling out of the Vero Beach, Florida, factory next month, and Piper will have one on display at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, set for July 29 through August 4.

The Seminole’s G1000 system comes with Garmin’s latest software, which includes new capabilities such as user-defined holds and a vertical profile view. While the G1000 has become known for good reliability, Seminole pilots will have a very capable backup system with Aspen Avionics’ EFD1000 located left of the G1000 PFD, which is included as standard equipment.

Introduced in the late 1970s, the Seminole is primarily used in the multi-engine flight training market. Powered by two 180 hp Lycoming engines and priced at $663,500, the twin is a less powerful, less expensive alternative to the Piper Seneca.

The only airplane left in Piper’s stables that has not been upgraded with the G1000 system is the retractable single-engine Piper Arrow, which is equipped with Garmin’s G500 system. Piper is not planning on upgrading the Arrow anytime soon, which is not surprising considering the company delivered fewer than two Arrows per year, on average, during the past five years, according to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s shipment data.

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Pilatus was the first manufacturer to start giving airplane buyers a free Apple iPad loaded with owner’s manuals and apps. Now the Swiss company is adding in-cockpit Wi-Fi capability by offering an option to incorporate Aspen Avionics’ Connected Panel technology with the PC-12 NG’s Honeywell Primus Apex avionics system.

The upgrade will enable pilots to upload flight plans created on the iPad directly into the certified avionics with a couple of button presses. Other Connected apps being designed for use with Apex include wireless upload of chart, navigation and terrain databases to the cockpit and download of maintenance data. Passengers can sync their iPads as well by downloading an app that shows a moving map updated with current location and ETA. Jeppesen, Honeywell, Pilatus and Aspen are each developing apps for Connected Panel in the PC-12.

Because the hardware installation of Aspen’s Connected Gateway box is covered under the PC-12 NG type certificate, the upgrade doesn’t require an Aspen display. In fact, according to Aspen, the only difference pilots and passengers will notice is that the technology just works.

“[Connected Panel] for Pilatus creates a better flight experience for pilots and owners by streamlining maintenance logging and data loading activities,” said Aspen Vice President of Marketing Brad Hayden. “Aspen’s leading-edge Connected technology offers new opportunities for data management that were unimagined only a few years ago. We are pleased that our technology is improving the customer experience for Pilatus pilots and operators.”

The Aspen hardware can be installed for about $16,500 in new and in-service NG airplanes. Initial deliveries of the Connected Enabled PC-12 and apps are planned for this summer.

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Piper has received FAA type certificate approval to install Garmin G1000 avionics in its single-engine Archer model. Widely used as an ab initio trainer, the Archer is powered by a 180 hp Lycoming O-360 A4M engine and cruises at 128 knots. Archers come in two models, the LX and TX, priced at $341,900 and $331,500 respectively.

Deliveries of G1000-equipped Piper Archers will begin later this year, starting with eight going to Florida Institute of Technology’s College of Aeronautics and 22 to CAE Oxford Aviation Academy. Both training organizations also hold options for more G1000-equipped Archer TXs.

The G1000 will replace the G500 avionics currently installed in Piper’s Archers. President and CEO Simon Caldecott said, “We are pleased the pilot training marketplace has validated this development with two significant fleet orders.”

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Cobalt Aircraft Industries has selected the SmartDeck integrated avionics suite from Canada’s Esterline CMC Avionics for its sleek Co50 five-place, all-composite single, the companies announced at AOPA Summit in Palm Springs, California.

The Co50’s standard SmartDeck avionics system will include dual air-data/attitude-heading reference systems (ADAHRS), WAAS GPS and an integrated digital autopilot.

Cobalt says its first prototype Co50 aircraft is now entering the initial phases of its development flight test program in Canada. The airplane would be powered by a 350-hp, fadec-equipped Continental TSIOF-550-D2B piston engine and is projected to deliver a maximum cruise speed of 250 knots at 25,000 feet and a fully loaded maximum range of 1,150 nm.

The SmartDeck integrated flight control and display system for the Co50 will include two 12-inch primary flight and a third 6.5-inch dedicated display for flight planning and radio management. TAWS-B, TCAS/TAS, satellite weather, lightning detection and synthetic vision are also included, providing full situational awareness capability, CMC said.

The first Co50 prototype has undergone high-speed taxi testing and is entering the initial phases of its development flight test program. Cobalt has claimed on a number of occasions since introducing the airplane in 2010 that a prototype was close to flying. The company says it is “confident” that once its launches the certification flight test program with Transport Canada, the Part 23 airplane can enter the market within 18 to 24 months.

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When Rockwell Collins launched its new Fusion avionics system on the Bombardier XRS (now the Global 6000) at NBAA 2007, I was completely mistaken about what this new avionics suite was all about. It was hardly my fault though. New products in our industry have always been associated with new stuff, new displays, radios, radars, antennas and so forth, so I naturally assumed that Fusion was more of the same, a product revamping that would take the company’s already highly regarded Pro Line 21 system and give it a shiny upgrade.

As nice as that sounds, this view sold Fusion short. The new product suite, as it turned out, wasn’t about products at all, but it was, rather, a new way of thinking about avionics, an architectural and systems approach that, it’s no exaggeration to say, has changed the way that Rockwell Collins thinks about avionics and the way, increasingly, that its customers do as well.

The genesis of Fusion was something called Flight 2, a project that Collins did early last decade on the Air Force’s KC-135 tanker program, work that found its way onto the Boeing 787 and Airbus A380 and A350.

The magic of Fusion, said Joel Otto, senior director of commercial systems marketing for Rockwell Collins, is that it is flexible, scalable and hardware-agnostic. This range of characteristics, Otto said, gives Rockwell Collins “the ability to create a range of configurations and solutions that span that spectrum of aircraft while bringing the capabilities that are embodied in [Fusion] software across those configurations relatively simply.”

Just how the company arrived at this kind of architecture sounds simple in theory, especially in retrospect, but it required a companywide commitment to the new framework. “It’s primarily a software-based architecture,” Otto explained, “and it’s a networked and modular-based system too, so it’s much easier to add these building blocks in without disrupting the highly integrated system that already exists.”

This flexibility in terms of hardware and scale have allowed Rockwell Collins to create wildly different-looking suites with very different feature sets and capabilities without having to start from scratch each time out. “We’ve gotten to the point where the software is independent of the hardware configuration,” Otto said. “Our primary touch-screen displays, for instance, that we had at AirVenture and NBAA last year with embedded FMS and other avionics functions, were all Fusion, with all of its functionalities rehosted.”

To make this happen, Rockwell Collins engineers migrated the software to a new hardware configuration, such as the company did with the touch displays it showed off last year and just as it has done with the version of Fusion that will soon go into existing Hawker Beechcraft King Airs as Pro Line 21 upgrades. “We’ve tailored [that version of Fusion] with new interfaces,” Otto said, “to enhance single-pilot operation, in part by simplifying the flight management interface by making it more icon-based and more intuitive for that segment of the market,” though Otto added that some of the single-pilot features are likely to “migrate” up to larger platforms over time.

Otto explained that, in terms of fielding new systems on new airplanes in different market segments, Fusion makes life a lot easier by allowing the company to design and certify systems far more quickly than it ever could before. Fusion, Otto said, “gives us the ability to migrate and rehost that software across different hardware platforms and to easily change up the configuration of Fusion. [This] is what gives us the flexibility, making it easy to add or subtract features — you might have three FMSs on long-range aircraft but only two on domestic aircraft and perhaps only one on [an entry-level] class of aircraft. You can easily do all that because it’s all networked, and you don’t have dedicated data buses that you have to run every time that you want to add a new hardware unit on an older airplane. Now all we need is one network switch connection and we’re done.”

Some of the new benefits of Fusion were envisioned before customers were even aware they would want them. One such feature is Fusion’s information architecture, a design that allows Rockwell Collins to get the data that flows throughout the system to every system on the airplane and even into the corporate offices, effectively “making the aircraft a node on an information network, helping the owner of the aircraft manage that asset more effectively,” Otto said, while helping Collins develop new products to aid in that record keeping endeavor.

Fusion will also help Rockwell Collins keep its products up to date. “We know we haven’t envisioned every potential application that pilots are going to need over time,” Otto said, “so we’ve created an architecture and a framework that make it much easier for us to bring those new features and capabilities into the market as they become available or necessary. The architecture is very well positioned to be able to incorporate those more efficiently and effectively than previous architectures were able to do.”

From an aircraft manufacturer’s point of view, Fusion is magic, because it takes out a lot of the hard and expensive work of upgrading avionics capabilities, something that high-flying customers demand on a regular basis, and instead simplifies that process, not only in development but in the certification phase too, because it’s easier to “show that it’s not going to adversely affect other functions on the airplane,” Otto said. With training too, Fusion makes it simple, allowing pilots trained on previous avionics systems to upgrade to a new airplane sometimes with minimal differences training.

HUDs Integrate
Another hallmark of Fusion is that its user interface is designed to seamlessly integrate the use of a head-up display (or two) and to bring the numerous benefits of a HUD onto the primary flight display even if there’s no HUD present.

As you might know, a head-up display is a projection system that allows the pilot to keep his head up (hence the name) looking at the outside world with primary flight instrumentation superimposed upon a pane of glass so there’s no need to look down at the panel-mounted display in order to land the airplane. The benefits of a HUD are many, but most important is that pilots using a HUD fly approaches more accurately and more reliably. The FAA recognizes this and gives credit in certain cases to lower minimums, down to 100 feet decision altitude, for crews using a HUD to fly an approved approach.

For years HUDs have made use of a variety of sensors that see through darkness and certain types of clouds to make flying many approaches in IMC largely visual affairs. In the very recent past, these see-through sensors have been supplemented by a new technology, synthetic vision, which paints a conformal computer-generated image of the outside world. On Rockwell Collins HGS, the synthetic (SVS) and enhanced (EVS) vision pictures are combined along with flight instrument and some navigation data, and it’s all presented through a small glass display through which the pilot continues to look at the real, outside world.

I’ve flown HGS on a few different platforms now, and it changes the way you look at flying a jet. For one thing, with a HUD it is much easier to hand-fly the airplane very precisely, since there’s no need for a scan — all the information you need is right there in front of your eyes. In addition to the tradition-critical flight information, there’s more, including extensive trend information, that makes anticipating diversions, even small ones, easy.

Fusion recognizes the importance of HGS and runs with it, integrating elements of Fusion into the HGS (such as those cool, glowing airport domes that make it easy to see where the flight-planned destination is) while taking HUD symbology and using it on the primary flight display in order to make the transition from head-up time to head-down time as seamless as possible.

Fusion will also allow, as Otto pointed out, new features as they emerge. One such feature, said Peeter Sööt, principle marketing manager for head-up guidance systems for Rockwell Collins, is an enhanced vision sensor the company is developing that might help lower landing minimums down to as little as 300 feet RVR. Fusion frees up development of such products because the calculus behind building them is easier than ever, since it goes without saying that Fusion will be able to efficiently accommodate the new hardware and software related to them.

Flying Fusion
I was among the first journalists to get to see the certified version of Fusion in action when I flew the system on Bombardier’s Global 6000 intercontinental bizjet out of Bradley International Airport in Connecticut recently. The Global 6000 is an amazing airplane (look for a full story on it in a coming issue of Flying), and Fusion, or the “Vision” flight deck, as Bombardier refers to it, fits into the 6000 as it does any airplane, by using the technology and interfaces appropriate to the platform.

In the case of the 6000, that meant HGS on the pilot’s side; graphical, keyboard- and cursor-driven flight management; large-screen PFDs; and multiple large secondary displays, in addition to synthetic and enhanced vision on the HUD plus a wealth of automated checklists, charts, integrated engine and systems utilities and communications utilities. One of the most elegant and useful features is the ability to “window” the displays using a single large display, a half-and-half display or a three-up display, allowing pilots to customize their information or, very importantly, continue viewing a geo-referenced approach chart full-size while keeping tabs on the systems and progress of the flight (among other options).

Interestingly, because of its size, crew makeup and mission, the Global 6000 has a relatively straightforward implementation of Fusion, one that seems perfectly aligned to the 6000’s very long range mission while giving its professional crews everything they need to do the job over land or on long over-water legs while leaving out features they arguably don’t need, such as touch displays and a second HUD, for instance.

While the Global 6000 aptly demonstrates the suitability of Fusion to the high end of the market, Rockwell Collins sees a wide range of applications, from twin turboprops to intercontinental airplanes like the Global 6000. Indeed, a lot of the capabilities of Fusion — such as its easy integration with touch displays, its highly graphical user interface and its chameleon­like reconfigurability — lend themselves to creating effective single-pilot operation solutions, such as the Pro Line 21 retrofit solution that Rockwell Collins announced last year for Hawker Beechcraft King Airs.

Fusion has been announced on more than a dozen airplanes, including the entire Bombardier Global series, the Learjet 85 and Bombardier’s emerging CSeries airliners. Embraer will feature it on its Legacy 450 and 500 midsize airplanes, and Gulfstream will showcase it on the G280.

We’ll likely see many more new airplanes with Fusion as time passes, in part because pilots will love its user-friendly design, cutting-edge features and easy upgradability and in part because manufacturers get built-in efficiencies with Fusion, both when they initially certify it in their new airplane and then each time they look to upgrade it, something that will keep Fusion fresh as the years go on while keeping customers happy.

View our Pro Line Fusion photo gallery.

The post Flying Pro Line Fusion appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

FreeFlight has received a supplemental type certificate (STC) for the installation of its RANGR FDL-978TX universal access transceiver (UAT) into AgustaWestland’s AW139 helicopter. According to FreeFlight, this is the first rule-compliant ADS-B out UAT available for Gulf of Mexico (GOMEX) helicopter operators.

GOMEX presents a complex area to fly with thousands of daily helicopter flights, and because ADS-B infrastructure already existed it became a good test area for emerging systems. “The FAA allowed operators to install early versions of ADS-B that do not meet the final rule,” according to FreeFlight’s president and CEO Tim Taylor.

FreeFlight teamed up with Chevron Corporation during the STC development process for the AW139 – a common helicopter used to fly as many as 11,000 oil rig workers to and from platforms in the Gulf on a daily basis. “Working with Chevron we tackled the significant challenges in incorporating ADS-B into AW139’s sophisticated avionics suite,” said Taylor. In the end, he found the process “quite straightforward” and he expects installation in other aircraft types with less complex avionics systems to be even easier.

The RANGR FDL-978TX provides ADS-B out data, reporting the aircraft’s course, speed and altitude to air traffic controllers as well as nearby airplanes capable of receiving the information. The cost of the transmitter, antennas and installation kit is around $8,000, not including installation, according to FreeFlight. Additionally, a WAAS capable GPS must be available for the system to be functional. By 2020, aircraft operating in certain airspace, such as A, B and C, must be ADS-B out compliant.

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The idea behind avionics is that they should do what we want them to do without causing undo hassle or requiring too much attention on our part, attention we should be giving to flying the airplane. It’s like Facebook, the remarkably successful website that has attracted hundreds of millions of followers by giving them what they want, a simple, easy way to stay in touch with their friends and family. When people complain about Facebook, it’s either that it’s trying to do something apart from that main mission or that some feature is too complicated to use. When it comes to technology, the new lesson is that “complicated” is bad.

We’re finally getting that lesson in aviation. There’s been a trend these past 10 or 15 years among avionics manufacturers to make their products easier and easier to use. The movement has its roots in the world of computers, which is as it should be; today’s avionics are merely specialized computer systems, many of them running subsets of commercial off-the-shelf operating systems. If you want to understand “easy,” think iPad. Apple’s megapopular tablet wasn’t the first such product by a long shot. It was just the easiest and most satisfying to use.

When I say that avionics are “merely” offshoots of consumer systems, I’m being a bit facetious. Computerized avionics systems not only require sensor systems that are exotic by mainstream standards — such as AHRS and air data sensors — but they also depend on software that is required to be orders of magnitude more stable than consumer software, for obvious reasons. A crash on one’s desktop computer has far more pedestrian consequences than a crash on one’s digital flight deck.

More and more “flying” incorporates managing these computer systems, and that has caused a backlash, culturally and operationally. Many pilots who have been flying since before the advent of GPS moving map navigators — which wasn’t that long ago — feel as though the nature and essential craft of what we do has been changed in the rush to leverage technology for improved safety.

The move to make our flying lives simpler and our cockpit capabilities more powerful is not a new one. Modern computer technology has just allowed it to succeed at an unprecedented pace. The moving map is a good case in point. While the modern moving map has really been in our cockpits for only the past 20 years or so, most notably with the ubiquitous Garmin GNS 430 pocket-size FMS, attempts to automatically plot our position on a map began with the advent of long-range aerial navigation in the 1930s, with clever mechanical devices that held maps and were designed to turn navigation data into position information, which after all is what a moving map is all about and what we want. An HSI is really just a Rube Goldberg attempt at doing the same thing using the best available technology of the day. Thank goodness we’ve figured out how to get a computer and a display to do the job far more elegantly.

For decades our cockpits have had a lot of data for us to use as we would. The problem, and it was a big problem, was that the data was presented in a way that was really hard for the average pilot to use. As much as you might feel warm and fuzzy about this antique technology, a VOR indicator is a human factors nightmare. For that matter, VORs are horribly outdated as well, while still being very useful, that is, because they’re still a good backup to modern technology. A VOR, let’s remember, is an incredibly complex system for figuring out something simple: where you are laterally from a fixed position on Earth, the spot in the ground somewhere, next to a busy urban airport or along the side of some remote highway in New Mexico, where the VOR transmitter and its not-so-little building is situated. Moreover, the cockpit technology we employ to make use of a VOR’s signal is equally archaic, a pilot-adjustable spinning card from which we divine in which direction the station is — wait, is that to the station or from it?

With a moving map, the pilot can see a 2-D representation of the airplane and the station. This capability, to know where we are and where we’re going, is what we really want to know. OBSs, RMIs, ADFs and to/from indicators are technological relics, mechanisms that were once the best way we had of doing something technologically complicated. Computers can do all that better, more simply and more intuitively. Thank goodness.

One element of the computer that’s taken a while to make its way into the cockpit is ease of use. Happily, that is changing, thanks to advances from major avionics manufacturers, noteably Garmin, with its G2000, G3000 and G5000 cockpits, and Rockwell Collins, with its scalable Fusion platform. This is to take nothing away from the remarkable hardware innovations that both companies continue to make. Collins’ advances are arguably most noteworthy in terms of HUD development and communications, and Garmin has pioneered in envelope protection and ADS-B, among others.

While features are important, ease of use is arguably the new frontier of avionics design.

Rockwell Collins, which has enjoyed tremendous success with its Pro Line 21 range of flat-panel avionics products, has for the past several years been developing Fusion, which seeks to turn Pro Line on its head. While Pro Line 21 has numerous advanced safety utilities, it is in terms of architecture an old-fashioned FMS-based avionics system. Fusion is a completely different take on what avionics are and what they should be. With touch-screen displays, graphical flight planning, HUD symbology that matches that on the PFD, one-button attitude deviation recovery button and much more, Rockwell Collins has re-envisioned its avionics and put itself in a leadership position in the process.

Garmin doesn’t advertise the fact very much, but many of the features on the new graphical interface for its Aera portables, its GTN panel-mount navigators and its next-gen flat-panel suites have their roots in consumer products, like portable auto navigators, smartphones and outdoor GPS products. With consumer gear, the key is to make the learning curve as easy as possible, so people with no specialized training or expertise can use the equipment quickly and without a lot of study. How you do that is no secret. You create a highly graphical user interface with multiple ways to do the same chore — touch screen, hard keys, soft keys, etc. — and you keep the menu system as shallow as possible, something that’s a hard lesson for some manufacturers.

Garmin has applied all of these lessons on all of its latest products. To operate the G2000, for instance, you can use the touch controller to activate a graphical icon representing what you want to do. A simple home-screen icon takes you to a page of icons that lead you in your intended direction. A hard button for “direct to” navigation is on every box, and the menus are so shallow and intuitive, it’s impossible to get lost.

Contrast that with the G1000, with its chapters and pages menu system with functions, such as vertical navigation, located several levels below the surface. Knowing the lay of the land with G1000 is absolutely essential to a successful experience. With G2000, all that complexity is gone. It’s easy in a case like this to miss the revolution. The fact is, Garmin doesn’t want you to notice it. It wants it to be so easy you miss it altogether while you’re enjoying your flying.

The post The New Avionics Revolution appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Esterline CMC Electronics‘ SmartDeck integrated avionics system has its first OEM customer after Evektor of the Czech Republic this week announced the cockpit’s selection aboard the multipurpose EV-55 Outback twin turboprop.

SmartDeck has had a long gestation, starting out in the mid 1990s as a project begun by Goodrich. The cockpit system has been improved over the years, and almost ended up as a factory option in Cirrus models when L-3 Avionics acquired the system, until Garmin won the business instead. L-3 subsequently sold the FAA-certified SmartDeck system to CMC Electronics, based in Montreal, which has expertise with military and airline avionics.

“We are delighted that Evektor, the highly respected Czech aircraft manufacturer, has selected our SmartDeck integrated cockpit for their new Outback aircraft,” said Greg Yeldon, president of Esterline CMC Electronics. “Flexibility is at the core of our design philosophy and we look forward to working with Evektor and supporting their evolving needs.”

Under development for military and civilian applications, The EV-55 features a large and flexible cabin, offering a variety of configurations that range from nine- to 14-passenger versions and an all-cargo layout. The airplane is designed to operate from short, unpaved strips in hot and high-altitude airport conditions. With a projected price of $2.2 million, the EV-55 is positioned as a competitor to the Cessna Caravan. First deliveries are expecte in late 2014 or early 2015.

A prototype of the new Evektor EV-55 turboprop made its first flight from Kunovice airport in the Czech Republic last June 24. Evektor will offer the aircraft in several versions: passenger transport, cargo transport, a combined version with space for cargo in the cabin forward section and passenger seating in the rear, as well as search and rescue and surveillance versions for military applications.

The post Evektor Selects CMC’s SmartDeck Cockpit appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Robinson Helicopter is looking at making the Aspen Evolution Flight Display (EFD) a factory installed option, Robinson head Kurt Robinson said at Heli-Expo. During his remarks, Robinson praised the compact form factor and low cost of the Aspen option, while stopping short of giving any firm promises or timetables for availability as, he explained, the company is busy with a number of ongoing certification programs, including for the R66 with Transport Canada and EASA. Aspen is hoping for the EFD to be available as a factory option beginning sometime later this year.

The Aspen option is a tempting one for Robinson and for its customers, not just for the R44, the four-place piston powered helicopter that has been Robinson’s bread-and-butter product for the past two decades now. The product is a perfect fit, Aspen’s Brad Hayden told Flying, for all of the Robinson models, from two-seat piston powered R22 to the turbine powered R66. “Though it’s a big part of it, it’s not just the size,” Hayden explained, going on to say that the ease of installation, weight reduction and greatly enhanced safety features all add to the allure. The Aspen display boasts all the features of a full-fledged digital PFD plus digital AHRS, GPS flight plan display, and the ability to interface with a number of other navigation and safety systems.

Aspen founder and product guru Peter Lyons told Flying that the EFD has been enhanced in a number of ways to make it more robust, a must for helicopter flying. Changes include Level-B software, a vibration isolating mount and high intensity radiated fields (HIRF) testing, something that’s more critical for helicopters than fixed-wing aircraft, as helicopters as a type spend an inordinate amount of time around high tension lines and other high-energy sources.

An STC for installation of the EFD has already been earned with Transport Canada, and Hayden told Flying that FAA authorization for that approval is expected within the coming months. He added that a number of other STC programs are under way both in the United States and overseas.

Click here to check out our Robinson factory tour gallery.

The post Aspen Option for Robinson appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

(February 2012) The first time I climbed into the Remos G-3 it was for my Sport Pilot discovery flight. The “shiny” Dynon Avionics glass and Garmin GPS, navcom and radio did not go unnoticed as I scanned the panel. “Wow, this Sport Pilot stuff is cool,” I thought. Especially since prior to this flight I had been flying in an older Piper Cherokee Warrior. The stalwart trainer was outfitted with mechanical gauges and older navcom equipment.

Most of us know by now that the advent of the Sport Pilot/Light Sport Aircraft rule seven years ago spurred the production of new airplanes, S-LSA, that offered modern technology and performance. Thanks to the technology advances of the day and the fact that the ASTM standards that “govern” LSA (see last month’s column, “ASTM and LSA“) currently don’t include design and performance for certain equipment, many of the airplane manufacturers could install glass, for instance, or offer these advances as options to the standard panel, with virtually no red tape.

That being the case, I couldn’t help but wonder if these avionics were the same as those that go through the rigorous certification process required by the FAA for standard-category light airplanes like a Piper Cherokee, Cessna 172 or Cirrus SR22. The equipment that goes into this type of aircraft must be signed off with a Technical Standard Order (TSO) by the FAA. A TSO is a minimum performance standard that gives the manufacturer authorization for the design and production of “specified materials, parts and appliances” (such as avionics). In essence, a TSO is a blanket approval process for aviation goods.

Under current ASTM standards for LSA, it’s up to the airplane manufacturer to decide what particular piece of equipment it wants to install in which airplane.

Where allowed, the manufacturers can opt for non-TSO’d avionics (some, like transponders — think about it — must be “TSO’d”). So why choose non-TSO, when permissible?

Who better to ask than the two manufacturers of the avionics in the Remos? Dynon has been producing avionics for the Experimental and LSA markets (aka sport aviation market) both in Europe and the United States since 2003, beginning with introduction of its EFIS-D10. Garmin specifically began targeting the sport aviation market in 2009 with introduction of its G3X EFIS, though the market has been using its navcoms and portable GPSs from the beginning.

According to both manufacturers, the short answer to “why?” comes down to time, money and the freedom to innovate. Companies can produce and sell non-TSO’d equipment at a price point that is more affordable than TSO’d equipment. And precisely because manufacturers don’t have to spend the time and money required to put it through a lengthy FAA certification process, they can be more innovative with the features they add.

The long answer is more involved, however, explains Robert Hamilton, Dynon’s director of marketing and sales — involved because some would argue that the non-TSO’d products found in many of today’s S-LSA, for example, are innovative, high-quality and proven because they’re based upon products that experimental homebuilders had been installing into their creations and flying in the field for years prior to the advent of LSA.

“We can more quickly build upon an existing product to create a new one, from adding new technology like synthetic vision to incorporating an innovative feature homebuilders want to see added,” Hamilton says. “A TSO’d product could take years to get approval.

“SkyView 3.0 grew from our D10/D100 line of products, adding improvements like engine monitoring, HSI and autopilot over the years. We knew we were going to add the synthetic vision, but sometimes other new features, like the G-meter, are based strictly upon homebuilders’ feedback.”

(It would do well to note here that ASTM standards currently don’t exist for software and database updates to non-TSO’d avionics either. As a result, manufacturers such as Dynon can offer software and database updates for much lower costs and often even free.)

Longtime avionics manufacturers like Garmin are leveraging their industry experience from designing and producing FAA-certified products to produce non-TSO’d products.

Take Garmin’s GPSMap 496.

“The portable 496 doesn’t meet the FAA’s HIRF/lightning criteria necessary for an IFR GPS like our certified GTN touch-screen navigators do,” says Jim Alpiser, Garmin’s director of aviation aftermarket sales and marketing. “A VFR-only airplane like an S-LSA doesn’t need HIRF, so we don’t need to include that feature, which means we can offer it for less.”

As is the case with Dynon and its non-TSO’d avionics (and any manufacturer’s for that matter), Garmin has seen firsthand the time that can be saved in getting these products on line compared with those that require FAA certification.

“It took several years to get our Highway-in-the-Sky synthetic vision certified for the G1000, a TSO’d product,” Alpiser says. “We added SV to our G3X EFIS/EMS for the sport aviation market, and it only took about six months to develop and get into market.”

At the end of the day, Dynon’s Hamilton feels the quality of many non-TSO’d avionics in today’s market is comparable to that of certified products; otherwise S-LSA manufacturers and homebuilders wouldn’t buy them. That said, Hamilton admits that, because there aren’t any performance standards in place for avionics, performance can’t officially be proven other than by word of mouth by those who fly them.

Standards to Come?
That lack of equipment standards might change, however. There’s currently an ASTM F37 task group working on developing design and performance standards for flight instruments, avionics and supporting equipment in LSA, says Michael Schofield, who sits on the task group and is Dynon’s product manager.

“There’s a list of required equipment under the ASTM standards but no performance requirements equipment,” he explains. “For example, how accurate does an airspeed indicator need to be?”

It’s the task group’s aim, Schofield says, to fill that gap with appropriate standards that aren’t overburdensome in time and cost to the manufacturers but that offer real safety and performance benefits to users. The sport aviation industry wants to succeed, and part of that success is avoiding the extreme costs associated with manufacturing certified products.

Although the “shiny” avionics that I’ve been flying with in a Remos for more than a year now have been performing fine, I have to admit that it seems establishing such standards could only help the industry. Even if it’s just to keep others from wondering if the quality of the avionics equipment is up to snuff — or not.

The post Avionics and LSA appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

(February 2012) Flat-panel avionics systems for light airplanes, which seemed like the stuff of science fiction just a handful of years ago, have been around long enough to advance to a second generation. As far as Garmin avionics are concerned, that second generation of glass panels takes the form of G2000, a system that makes use of a lot of existing Garmin technology behind the panel but that incorporates an entirely new user interface, one that will change the way we fly.

Just as it sounds, G2000 is the follow-on to the immensely popular G1000 system. In various forms and using various names, G1000 has been installed as standard equipment in around 30 different models of airplanes, from entry-level piston singles to light jets. G1000 is standard fare on Cessna’s lineup of piston singles, from the high-performance Corvalis to the entry-level Skyhawk trainer. As a result, steam gauges are a mystery to many new pilots; to them, G1000 is synonymous with “avionics.”

Just as G1000 made its way into cockpits one airframe at a time, you can fully expect G2000 to do the same, though the rate at which this happens might be slower than it was for its predecessor because of the lingering economic woes that have slowed new-airplane manufacturing worldwide. In the meantime, expect a lot of airplane makers to be looking to find ways to work G2000 into their product lineups in years to come.

I flew G2000 in a high-performance piston single in Austin recently with Garmin’s Ben Kowalski in the right seat. Our round-robin IFR flight was flown largely in IMC and featured a good deal of turbulence, ideal for the purposes of evaluating Garmin’s newest system.

What is G2000?
It’s been a while now since Garmin announced that it was going to be making touch-screen-controlled flat-panel avionics systems; the first such launch was with the G3000 system in the HondaJet and the now-discontinued Piper Altaire. At NBAA 2010, Cessna announced that it would put the Garmin G5000 system in its updated flagship, the Citation Ten. Cessna also announced that it would use the G2000 system in its Corvalis TTx high-performance single.

While the different touch-screen-controlled avionics systems have different software and different hardware configurations, just like different versions of G1000 do, they are substantially similar in design and the user experience. All of it is much prettier to look at and much easier to use, the former being an aesthetically fortuitous side effect of the latter.

While G2000 is an upgrade to the G1000 system, it is much more than that too. It is a whole new approach for Garmin, one that will guide the company’s lineup for years to come, as the design of G1000 did. As such, it is a risk. Garmin, because its G1000 system was so ubiquitous, has in large part taught a new generation of pilots what flat-panel avionics are all about, and with G2000, it will be rolling out a whole new interface, a whole new way of looking at the way we pilots interact with the avionics in our airplanes.

Now, there has been some confusion about touch screens. G2000’s main screens, the PFD and the MFD, are not touch-screen devices. Instead they are controlled by a touch-screen controller pad, the GTC 570. In most installations, the G2000 will be controlled by a single touch-screen controller. In other airplane installations, it might have more touch-screen controllers. In the Citation Ten and the newly announced midsize Latitude, the G5000 system will have four touch-screen controllers. The airplane in which I flew G2000 was outfitted with two GTC 570s for development purposes. Only one is needed, though the two controllers interact seamlessly.

The principles underlying G2000 — most of what I say will also apply to the G3000 and G5000 systems — are immediately apparent when you use it. Not only that, but they are immediately apparent when you use the company’s other latest aviation products, including the GTN series panel-mounted navigators and even its Aera handheld navigators.

The common design traits among all of these products are the use, primarily, of touch controls, a highly symbolic graphical user interface and pilot-friendly software.

Hardware
All the outward components of G2000 are new: The displays, the controllers, the autopilot mode controller and the PFD controller are specific to the new system, and all of them take advantage of new technologies. At the same time they provide system redundancy. If the touch controller were to fail, you could do everything you need to do with the physical PFD controller.

The autopilot mode controller, even more to the point, is almost identical to units you’ll find in G1000 installations, because there is no advantage to be gained by putting autopilot functions in the software. The physical controller continues to do its job perfectly.

The displays are widescreen (16:9 ratio), so they can accommodate more information. Older displays are 4:3 ratio. The transition from older to newer display formats is identical to the changeover from our old CRT televisions to new, high-definition models. The new ones are wider, sharper and more capable in every way.

Because it’s wider, the new PFD, for example, can be used to display flight plan legs, a traffic inset window and more. It also does a wonderful job of being a PFD; with its widescreen format, the synthetic vision display gives wider, better visual cues. The MFD, likewise, can display a map and all the engine gauges, so you don’t need to swap back and forth between pages of the MFD to see what you want to see. Wide screens are not just different: They’re better.

The displays are LEDs, as opposed to the LCDs in G1000, so they’re more vibrant and can display many more colors. Because their resolution is so much better (1280 x 768 versus the 1024 x 768 displays of the G1000 system), there are many more addressable pixels so that the screens can display more imagery and keep the images sharp even at smaller sizes.

In some installations, the widescreen aspect ratio can free up panel space — because it’s wider and not as tall as previous displays — allowing panels to be a bit shorter.

Another big advantage of LEDs is their ability to dim very effectively compared with LCDs. They run cooler and have better luminescence and better contrast to boot. LEDs also last longer than LCDs.

The main displays are not touch screens, which is part of Garmin’s philosophy on the system. A touch-screen controller is used to control the displays, and standby hardware controls back up the touch controller. In some installations, again, there will be multiple touch-screen controllers.

This approach, which is physically similar to using a cursor control device, focuses the pilot’s attention more effectively than if there were multiple touch points, as there would be with a touch-screen PFD. There’s also an argument to be made that controlling a screen that is a good reach away is more difficult because the long reach makes fine motor control more difficult. The touch controller, on the other hand, requires a shorter, easier-to-make touch.

Touch-Screen Controllers: What’s in Them?
To me the most surprising thing about the GTC 570 touch-screen controllers is how big they are. Their large size, in addition to their proximity — they are essentially at short-arm’s length away — make it easy to see what you’re doing on the controller. Large icons and oversize text give a feel to G2000 that is very consumerlike; users of Garmin’s Nuvi automotive navigators will feel right at home with the G2000 interface. The large screen also allowed G2000 designers to dedicate space for frequencies at the top of the display. One thing that all pilots do is talk on the radio (OK, almost all pilots), so that information is placed atop the screen for easy, never-changing reference.

The touch-screen controllers in G2000 are made so they are easy to touch accurately, even when the air is rough. The controller has built-in, contoured thumb and finger rests along its margins to allow you to hook a digit around the edge and make an accurate touch input. Physical controls are used in some instances, because they are better for doing a particular physical chore. An altimeter setting knob (“baro”) is included in the PFD controller, for instance, for that frequently used function, and a range knob is located on the touch-screen controller. Likewise, you get range, comm and volume knobs, among others, that allow you to access frequently used features. In most cases, you don’t need the knobs; you can make inputs using the touch-screen controller. Pilots will surely differ in how they use the controller. One of the guiding principles of G2000, and for Garmin as a company going forward, is that its products give users many different, equally easy pathways to arrive at the same desired function, the idea being that it doesn’t matter how you get there, just that you do get there.

These touch screens are also, no doubt, unlike others you’ve used. Unlike devices like the Apple iPad, which uses a capacitive touch screen, a technology that depends on the human touch to activate, the GTC 570s make use of infrared technology for its touch sensitivity. The controllers have several hundred infrared transmitters installed around the periphery of the screen that send a signal just a small fraction of an inch over the surface. When this matrix is interrupted by the tip of the finger — it doesn’t actually have to physically contact the screen — the controller registers a touch.

Flying G2000
My flight in G2000 in a high-performance single, as I’ve said, was telling. The weather was IFR/marginal VFR with a relatively low overcast, thick layers, gusty winds and bumpy air. In other words, it was perfect weather for testing G2000.

With a little guidance from Ben, I did all my usual piloting chores to get the ATIS, dial up clearance delivery, get my clearance, talk to ground and run all checklists.

Calling up frequencies is easy. As I’ve said, there are multiple ways to get the information into the box, by either nominating it from a data screen on the touch controller or inputting it directly from the concentric knob on the lower right. Again, it’s all within easy arm’s reach. The way you input frequencies is different too. You can put a new frequency into the standby, as we’re all used to doing now, or you can put it directly into the active box and avoid having to swap frequencies.

Even when you do this, you still retain the old frequency in memory, should the need arise to go back to the last controller. There are all kinds of time-saving functions built in. To input the frequency 124.4, the ATIS for KAUS, for example, just input 244, no leading ones or decimal points required, and you’re done.

You can also manage the intercom functions with the GTC 570. This is accomplished, once again, graphically. Touch the intercom control button and a graphic of the intercom landscape appears, with icons for pilot, copilot and passengers shown connected by a bold, graphic arrowed line. Simply touch the line to enable or disable the connection between seats or the user icon to adjust squelch or volume.

With G2000, anything with a digital input can be controlled with the touch-screen controller. In many airplanes, that means the environmental controls will be part of the system, as they were in the high-performance single in which I was flying. Too cold? Drag the temperature line to where you want and, voilà, you’ve made your desired change — no reaching across the cockpit required to do what you want. The pilot’s focus remains on flying the airplane because it all takes place right where he’s seated.

When we’re flying in the system, managing flight plans takes up a lot of our time and attention. With G2000, that chore will take up less of both commodities. The system, for example, will nominate nearby VORs or intersections for your flight plan — after all, it does know where you are. Want to change a flight plan? Tap the section you want to change and G2000 will query you about what you want to add or delete and where you want to put it. No menu diving is required. You can modify flight plans, add procedures, activate legs and do vertical nav all without having to be a Zen master of the menu system. It is revolutionary stuff.

How hard will the G2000 be to use in turbulence? The answer is, no harder than what you’re doing now. Thanks to the design of the physical box in which the touch-screen controller resides, with its recessed beveled edges, it’s easy to brace your hand on the side and make sure and solid touches. And because the controller is so close, control is further enhanced. The bottom line on turbulence: It’s a nonissue.

For pilots coming from G1000 or even from an airplane that relies on Garmin 430 or 530 navigators, the G2000 system will be an easy transition.

In rolling out G2000, Garmin was essentially requiring pilots to learn a new way to interact with their avionics system. At face value, that kind of sea change for the leading maker of avionics for light airplanes might seem like a big risk. Once you fly with G2000, however, you realize it is so easy to use, so intuitive and so capable that there was little risk involved, just opportunity.

View our Garmin G2000 photo gallery.

The post Garmin G2000: The Shape of Things to Come appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

European aviators can now install Garmin’s GTN 650 and 750 GPS/navcom systems after EASA signed off the validation paperwork for the STC Garmin received from the FAA in March for the touchscreen navigators. To achieve EASA’s validation, the Garmin 650 and 750 had to meet European regulatory requirements, such as 8.33-kHz VHF communication, immunity from FM radio broadcasts, B-Rnav, P-Rnav and optional Class-B TAWS.

Only a few months after entering the market, thousands of GTN-series systems have been installed, according to Garmin’s vice president of aviation sales and marketing Carl Wolf.

With such a strong entry to the market, chances are the GTN 650/750 will become as popular as their predecessors – the GNS 430W and GNS 530W. And the EASA validation comes just in time for the termination of GNS series production. Garmin has already stopped taking orders for the GNS 530W and will do the same for the GNS 430W sometime next year. PB/CSW

The post Garmin 650 and 750 Achieve EASA Validation appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Gray and rainy skies kept some pilots from flying to Hartford, Connecticut, in time for the start of AOPA Summit on Thursday, but those who filed IFR, flew by airline or drove were greeted by a busy agenda, a packed aircraft static display and an exhibit hall brimming with new aviation technologies.

Garmin drew a steady stream of visitors to its booth, where the company was showing off the new Aera 796 portable touchscreen navigator ($2,499 list price), featuring moving map, XM weather, terrain alerting, 3D synthetic vision and electronic charts and maps. The Garmin unit is intended to counter the inroads being made by Apple’s iPad, a pilot favorite for viewing charts, maps, checklists and just about anything else that previously was printed on paper. Judging by the sheer number of iPads and related apps we spotted at AOPA Summit, it will be a heated battle.

Hilton Software, maker of the popular WingX Pro7 iPad app, announced at AOPA Summit that it’s now supporting connectivity with the XRX PCAS Traffic System from Zaon Flight Systems. The app connects wirelessly to the portable XRX traffic system to provide real-time display of traffic threats on its moving map. WingX Pro7 is compatible with both new and existing Zaon XRX systems. A small Wi-Fi unit costing less than $100 is required for connectivity, the company said.

FreeFlight Systems showed off an ADS-B technology that can enable beaming of real-time traffic targets and Nexrad weather images to an iPad as well as a cockpit MFD. The company says it is in talks with app makers about embedding the technology in their software. The FreeFlight package includes a remote-mounted ADS-B receiver, GPS receiver and Wi-Fi unit and is projected to sell for around $3,500. The installation, said the company, will provide full compliance with the FAA’s 2020 ADS-B equipment mandate.

Aspen Avionics, meanwhile, announced that Evolution Synthetic Vision (ESV) is now shipping to owners of Evolution 1500, 2000 or 2500 flight displays. Evolution Synthetic Vision display on the company’s Level B PFD is expected to hit the market next year. Aspen says Evolution Synthetic Vision is available with software Version 2.4.1 and later as a field-loadable upgrade through its authorized dealer network. Price for the upgrade is $2,995.

The post Cockpit Technologies Take Center Stage at AOPA Summit appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My wife and I visited Bell Helicopter in Texas recently for recurrent training in the Bell 407. The day following completion of our training, we had the opportunity to make a 90-minute flight in the new Garmin G1000-equipped Bell 407GX.

I have extensive Garmin experience, and have flown G1000-equipped fixed-wing aircraft since Cessna first offered it in the piston product line. I presently fly a two-display G1000 installation in a T206 and a three-tube installation in a Caravan. While I love the G1000/GFC 700 autopilot installation in IFR-equipped fixed-wing aircraft, I had mixed feelings about how useful G1000 would be in a VFR helicopter. In particular, I was concerned about whether the new panel would obstruct the pilot’s view in off-airport operations, if the engine power gauges would be hard to use, and since helicopters need to be actively controlled at all times, often with two hands, how much “heads down” button pushing would be required. Having followed the G500H certification program in the 407, and being thrilled by how that turned out, I frankly wondered whether the G1000 would be a step forward or backward.

Since I often fly off airport and in the mountains in a 407, I couldn’t wait to get in the right seat of the 407GX and see whether the new, enlarged panel obstructed my view outside. Despite my concerns, Bell got it right, as the panel is cut so as to allow a view of the outside below, above and to the side of the panel.

With that big concern out of the way, Randall Parent, Bell’s 407GX demonstration pilot, hooked up a ground power unit so we could study the helicopter specific features of this G1000 installation. My first impression was how clean the G1000 installation was. I fly a late model 407, and its various engine and power gauges look simultaneously cluttered and antique by comparison with the two large G1000 displays, incorporating most all aircraft instrumentation and navigation in the 407GX.

The 407GX engine starting procedure is done with both the PFD and MFD switched on, which means most communication and navigation tasks can be completed before engine start, reducing rotors turning time prior to departing. Instead of checking various annunciators and systems as you do on the legacy 407 prior to start, you now have CAS messages on the G1000 displays. While I was concerned about the engine instruments presentation on the G1000, again I was quite pleased with how Bell and Garmin integrated all the various information into a single limit display.

Prior to lifting into a hover, we displayed the new rear-facing camera on the Garmin MFD, allowing us to look back toward our tail rotor and the area behind the helicopter. After we were established in a hover, and prior to departing the Alliance Airport on our flight, we pressed a button on the MFD, and the G1000 system calculated a power check of the engine. Previously, pilots would perform a power check by taking off and, once in flight, noting engine parameters, altitude and temperature, and later go to the RFM to determine the health of the engine. How sensible in a single-engine helicopter that you can get a quick check on the health of the engine prior to leaving the hover.

Departing the Alliance Class D airspace, we dropped down and looked at the helicopter specific TAWS installation in the 407GX. Previously, when flying a helicopter low level, you just inhibited the terrain warning to avoid constant nuisance alerts. With the 407GX, there are three modes, OFF, normal, and a low-level mode that avoids most nuisance alerts while highlighting obstacles like towers on the PFD. The display of terrain, obstacles and traffic is amazing on the Garmin synthetic vision, and the targets grow as you approach the conflict. The 407GX is also equipped with Garmin’s new directional audio panel, that among other features, broadcasts a traffic alert from, for example, your right side through the right ear cup of your headset. A neat helicopter-specific feature is that you can push a button on the cyclic, and with voice commands do many things on the audio panel that previously required a free hand. Since two hands are often required to control a helicopter, the voice control feature is a major benefit.

There is also an optional Iridium kit that allows you to place sat phone calls in flight, and access weather information in remote areas not covered by XM service. Since we live in Alaska, and XM does not provide Alaska weather, the Iridium option is attractive to us. The MFD allows you to easily access information concerning the 407’s fadec system, and wirelessly transmit that information from the helicopter for maintenance purposes. The MFD also has an SD card, where the flight can be downloaded and then displayed in Google Earth.

In flight, unlike on a legacy 407, where you monitored torque, MGT and gas producer for the first limit, the single limit display looks at all three parameters and flashes yellow or red depending upon what limit is reached and for how long. The airspeed tape adjusts for the Vne of the helicopter at different density altitudes, and even knows for example, that the Vne goes down for torque above max continuous. In the event of an engine failure, a large depiction of rotor rpm and the engine instruments automatically appears on the MFD.

While the 407GX is not certified for instrument flight, we decided to test the capability of the G1000 for an inadvertent IMC encounter by shooting a full procedure ILS back into Alliance. The PFD showed a series of boxes called Pathways that took us around a procedure turn course reversal, and down a stabilized ILS into Alliance. As someone that did their ATP Rotorcraft rating flying raw data on an HSI, I can confidently say that the ability to shoot an approach with the Garmin Pathway boxes is a major workload reducer in a helicopter.

After getting back on the ground, and reflecting on the test flight, I was incredibly impressed with the G1000 installation in the 407GX. Where I had envisioned just G1000 dropped into a rotorcraft, the GX installation does so much more, and it is far and away the most exciting avionics advance in helicopters that I have seen.

View our Bell 407 photo gallery.

The post Bell 407: A Pilot’s Perspective appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The introduction of Garmin’s new GTN touch-screen navigators, the GTN 650 and the large GTN 750, is remarkable in itself, but the fact that we’ve almost come to expect such works of seeming magic in our cockpits made me think back to the original precursor of the GTN products, the GNS 430, which I met for the first time a dozen years ago.

It’s hard to overestimate the impact of what we’ve all come to refer to simply as “the 430. It was central to Garmin’s success in aviation and to the widespread adoption of graphical, software-based navigation tools to our personal flying. I know it’s hard to remember that not too many years ago, nearly every one of us (excepting the folks who flew 777s and Airbus A300s) flew airplanes outfitted with what we now somewhat pejoratively refer to as “steam gauges.” These instruments required us to take multiple instrument indications and develop in our minds some kind of picture of what that meant to our flight situation. A much more direct representation of our flight situation was sorely needed.

Not that engineers weren’t trying to do just that. They were. It’s just that these instruments were developed over a period of many decades, and avionics manufacturers actually made some extremely ingenious improvements to them over the years. Such features as “flip-flop” frequency selection, textual displays, the horizontal situational indicator (HSI), and electric standby attitude instruments were all successful attempts to push the limits of the existing technology so it could provide safety or ease-of-use capabilities — like somewhat improved situational awareness, crude forms of graphical interface, or enhanced redundancy that it otherwise would not be able to.

When the two enabling revolutionary technologies of long-range nav (Loran and GPS) and affordable computer technology — displays, microchips and greatly improved code and graphical user interfaces — came together in the 80s and 90s, it was clear that there was room for great things in avionics. And we started to see those products early on, in the form of some great early GPS navigators — both handheld and panel mount — from Bendix/King, NorthStar and Trimble. Even Garmin, with the first IFR approach approved GPS, the GPS 155 TSO, was pushing in that direction.

But it wasn’t until Garmin unveiled the GNS 430 that everything changed. As far as I know, I was the first person outside of Garmin to lay eyes on it, and I remember it clearly.

It was in 1998 in Orlando at the Aircraft Electronics Association annual convention when Garmin’s Tim Casey led me into a back room at the convention center to show me the secret product that he and his team were going to unveil the following day. Tim pulled off the black drape over the product and there, all lit up and seemingly ready to go, was the GNS 430. Before Tim had said a word, my eyes went wide. There in front of me was a panel mount unit with a bright color moving map, built in comm radios, built in nav radios and a bezel-mounted series of keys and soft keys that I saw at a glance would be used to navigate the software of the unit. Little did I know at the time that a world of additional capability lay below the surface, giving pilots the ability to create complex flight plans with departure, arrival and approach segments, as well as pull up frequencies and other data and autofill them to the tuner. And there was so much more.

As Tim showed me the chapters and pages of the unit — he was still getting to know it himself — I was flabbergasted at the possibilities. Within a year I was flying the 430 as the standard navigator in my leased airplane. I loved it more than I would have guessed. Does it have shortcomings? I guess, but only from the perspective of someone who has come to expect so much from his avionics that when it comes to wanting things, the sky’s the limit.

The rest, as you know, is history. The 400 and 500 series navigators have gone on to unprecedented success in the GA market. There are by a recent count more than 100,000 of the units in service at this time. And the momentum of those navigators propelled Garmin to the creation of the G1000 avionics suite, which has gone on to be the de-facto standard in new airplane avionics.

In fact, it has spawned a new word, one that I use from time to time, “Garminized,” to describe the way that the sometimes-peculiar logic of the 430 and its offspring can affect the mind of the user. I have on many occasions had an instructor tell me a certain feature of the G430 was simple only to have them whiz through a dozen screens and submenus to execute a function as though a pilot sliding into the seat could have figured it without even trying. When you think doing vertical nav on the Garmin is easy, your mind has clearly been Garminized.

Then again, up until the introduction of the 430 most of us who had used long-range navigators before were used to arcane menus and logic. I loved the KLN series Loran and GPS navigators. But easy to use? Try again. The product was a direct descendent of the FMS units in large bizjets and airliners … and of the regulatory framework that covered their certification. In its defense, Garmin’s approach to the software and symbology was in many cases dictated by the FAA, which had little or no experience with this kind of technology. Even when the unit was capable of doing something simply, the regulators sometimes insisted on an extra step or two, simply because that was the way it had always been done before. This was true for the installations of the equipment, as well.

Regardless, the capability of the equipment more than made up for the less than perfect user interface. It was, in simplest terms, great equipment to have in the cockpit. It made flying easier, safer and more fun.

That’s not a bad requiem for a product that, with more than 100,000 installed units in the fleet, isn’t going away any time soon.

Check out Flying’s review of the new Garmin navigators here.

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