Avidyne vs. Garmin - Fight!

I spent some time today learning about the latest offerings from Avidyne in their glass panel products. I have wondered for a while what they might do to combat the powerhouse that is Garmin. Garmin has quickly made in-roads with their G1000, even displacing Avidyne in what I consider Avidyne's flagship deployment platform - the Cirrus SR22.

Currently, if you want to give Cirrus as much money as possible for an SR22 you will get a Garmin, not an Avidyne. Additionally, even when you do buy an Avidyne-equipped airplane Garmin STILL makes money - the Avidyne is always installed with Garmin radios and GPS units. I think Avidyne aims to fix that with their new FMS900w system.

This new system replaces the Garmin radios in the installation with a keyboard equipped "remote pad" for entering waypoints, freqs, etc. It even has a QWERTY keyboard - imagine that! The system also includes updated main displays. These now support synthetic vision (much like you'd see in a flight sim) and night vision cameras.

They also redesigned the UI - one of the big places Avidyne sets itself apart from Garmin. Avidyne actually cares about ease-of-use which is so critical for an in-flight software system. This is evident in the new setup with - just like their old system - a near-total lack of sub-menus and other "hidden" options. This means less time fumbling through the "pilot's guide" in-flight and less brain power devoted to simply operating your gear.

They also re-thought the "reversionary" mode to deal with a failed display. They re-thought it by getting rid of it completely. You simply configure each screen the way you want it - turn the MFD into the PFD with a button press. Want to see the engine instruments on the PFD for a moment - press a button. This means that if you are operating with a failed screen you can still access all capabilities, not just some of them as in the G1000.

The only place I still see Avidyne behind the curve is in the autopilot department. I've yet to see a GA autopilot that bests the Garmin GFC 700 (GFC 700 video).

Of course, to catch-up with Garmin they need to get this system out into the wild - and in large numbers. That is probably a much tougher chore than the entire tech development side of the equation.

Here's a quick rundown of the new Avidyne:

Cold morning with the G1000

Recently I went out to the airport bright and early to enjoy the brisk morning air and great climb rates. I made a 25 min trip up to KVUJ and back to get a little practice working with a towered airport.

This trip taught me that I like the active traffic monitoring of the SkyWatch system (such as in the Cirrus) better than the ground-communication based traffic system (TIS) in the C172 G1000. I got what turned out to be a false traffic alert telling me that someone was right on top of me at my same altitude. I scrambled my head around trying to find it for a few very tense seconds before I heard the traffic alert stop. Looking back at the screen it appeared to be telling me that the traffic data I had just freaked out about was old data. Not good.

Here's a bit of video from the flight:

JetPROP Demo Flight

I recently had the pleasure of taking a demo flight in a new friend's JetPROP airplane. A JetPROP is a Malibu/Mirage converted to use a Pratt & Whitney PT6A turbine engine and a Hartzell 4-blade reversible propeller. It is apparently the better way to go for a turboprop Piper vs. buying the Meridian (the JetPROP has more horsepower, better climb performance, lower fuel flows, and near-equal cruise speeds).

I took some video of the flight which I have embedded below. Unfortunately youTube blurred the videos a good bit, but it will have to do for now. :)

BTW, if you'd like to see a professional video of a very similar aircraft, the Piper Meridian, check out FlightVideoProductions (they have a few other cool videos for sale as well - think I will get the Col 400 one).

Part 1:


Part 2:

G1000 night flight

Tonight was my first solo with the G1000 avionics. It was also the perfect time to get night current again with the sun setting so early and the weather so nice (though a bit chilly).

I went out to the airplane after dark, so preflight involved using a flashlight. Of note, my main flashlight's (a Surefire) batteries, which I had checked at home before leaving for the airport, went dead the instant I tried to use them at the airport. Thankfully I had a backup flashlight and another set of batteries.

I wrestled with the brightness setting on the G1000 a bit - the auto mode was simply way too dark. It would have been fine up at altitude away from the airport lights, but down on the ground the screen was nearly unreadable until I manually set a higher brightness. I have the opposite problem with the Garmin 430 radio/gps units in the Cirrus - the auto-brightness on those seems to do absolutely nothing leaving the screen way too bright at night.

For this flight I made 2 trips around the pattern, then took off again to tour the city for a bit. I ended the flight by shooting the ILS 2 back into KUZA. I set up my video camera with a tripod in the back seat - here are the dark results:

G1000 transistion training - emergencies - final flight

For the final flight in my G1000 transition course we focused on failure scenarios. Not the "engine goes POOF" kind but the avionics kind.

Normal situation
This picture shows what the 2 Garmin screens show in a normal (non failure) situation. You can see we have 2 screens - the left PFD focusing on flight performance (airspeed, heading, attitude, altitude) and the right screen (MFD) focusing on engine data, mapping, checklists, and everything else.



Failed PFD screen
In this scenario the screen that is right in front of you (the PFD) has failed. This basically means the screen has gone dark. We simulate that by dimming the screen down to 0% brightness. After darkening the PFD we shot a GPS approach into Rock Hill.

When this failure has occured you shift the G1000 into Reversionary mode. That means the info that is normally split across 2 screens is now merged into 1. It actually duplicates the same data on both screens, but since the PFD screen is no longer functioning you only have the MFD to look to.

This means you spend a lot of time lookng over to the right and reaching over to push buttons or twist knobs. It wasn't too bad though I would certainly rather lose just the MFD than the PFD. My instructor and I talked about whether you were declare an emergency in that case. I think if I was in hard IFR conditions (or very dark night conditions) I would definately declare it, otherwise not.

This is what the MFD looks like for this failure:

Note how the engine instruments are sown, along with the primary flight instruments. This is also how the PFD looks when you are first starting up the aircraft and have not yet turned on all the electrical power (when the MFD is still turned off).

A nice side effect of the reversionary mode is that someone could fly from the right seat quite comfortably because this mode puts all the standard instruments right in front of both seats.

The big drawback with this mode is that you lose most of the MFD functionality - approach plates, airport data, checklists, XM radio, etc. You can still see lightning and NEXRAD on the small inset map though, which is no doubt very nice if you were in the clouds.

Failed AHRS
One of the most serious failures is loss of the AHRS (said: A-HARS). That component provides the artificial horizon and heading data for the G1000. The Air Data Computer (ADC) is responsible for providing altitude and airspeed data to the system. If you lose both of those, as we practiced, you are in for some serious work in IFR conditions.

In that situation, your PFD looks like this:

We simulated this by attaching a cardboard cover over the PFD that covers the instruments with the Xs on them in the above picture. This just left the comm/nav freq data at the top and the glideslope and CDI (the magenta line under the HDG).

With this failure you have to look at your standby "steam" gauges and the magnetic compass. I also used the moving map on the MFD to help with heading and general situational awareness. We shot two ILS approaches like this and it was an eye opener. While you still have a lot of capability in the airplane, even in this situation, you are looking all over the place for the info you need. This is certainly a time to declare an emergency if in IFR conditions. For all of these emergencies if conditions are VFR you would have little trouble at all. That means that I would do my best to get back into VFR conditions if possible if this ever happened to me.

With those 3 approaches finished I was signed off for an IPC (Instrument Proficiency Check) which means I am IFR current for a while.

I am also cleared to fly the G1000 solo which I plan to do soon!

A solo tour of northern S.C.

This morning I decided to take advantage of my holiday vacation to get some more practice flying the Alarus CH2000. The family was all out doing their Black Friday shopping, so I was left to fly solo.

Since this was the first time I had a chance to fly solo in Rock Hill, SC since 1996 I decided to make an aerial trek to nearby Crowder’s Mountain. Really it is a craggy hill but since it is surrounded by flat land a hike to its peak gives great views of the area. Of course, the views you get on a hike don’t match those from 3000 feet in an airplane, so I enjoyed the sights from my lofty perch.

I simply made a quick left hand turn around the mountain and headed back to over-fly my parent’s house. From there it was a quick left hand turn to get lined up on a long final for runway 02 at UZA.

I used the Garmin 430 to tune in the ILS on the way down but saw weird indications from the glideslope needle. The needle was bouncing up and down though the flag seemed to indicate it was getting signal. I just ignored it and used the VASI to set up my glidepath.

There was a little crosswind kicking that little airplane around so I made good use of the extreme rudder authority to kick her straight over the touchdown point.

G1000 transistion training - flight 2

Yesterday was my second flight behind the G1000. For this flight I kept the foggles on most of the time while shooting 3 instrument approaches - one LPV GPS, one VOR A, and one ILS.

The LPV was almost magical. The G1000 coupled with the GFC700 autopilot took over the vast majority of tasks for the entire approach. I had to push a few buttons now and then, and make power changes and radio calls, but beyond that I was just watching the instruments to make sure things were going as planned - which they did.

I was incredible to see the plane going down the GPS-derived glideslope like it was on rails. WAAS is a huge advance for us folks that fly into smaller airports.

The VOR-A approach was almost as easy. The extra steps there involve a little more autopilot management and manually switching to VOR mode when getting established on the approach.

For the ILS I flew it using the flight director. I felt like I was chasing it a bit back and forth, but my instructor felt a significant part of that was the ILS signal not being all that superb at Rock Hill.

I like the Garmin more each flight I make using it, but I still can't say I like it more than the Avidyne. I bet if/when I become very adept at using the G1000 I will like it better. I can definitely say though that the G1000 with the GFC700 autopilot is better than the avidyne with an external autopilot.