I’ve been flying the Garmin G1000 platform since my first flight in 2006 and it seems that every time I fly, I discover some new feature or function.
In this post, I will attempt to summarize some tips/tricks. This is in no way a substitute for a checkout on the G1000 platform with a CFI. There are lots of great G1000 training courses out there which will help you learn much more about the system, but here are a few of my quick tips. Continue reading
In early March, I was excited to learn about a new course from Sporty’s that focuses on modern autopilots. I finally got a chance to watch the video and share some of my thoughts.
The new Sporty’s video short course titled Pilot’s Guide to Modern Autopilots highlights some of the differences, and similarities, of both the Garmin GFC-700 and the S-Tec 55X; two of the most popular autopilots in airplanes today. Continue reading
According to a post on AOPA’s Pilot Blog, Olathe, KS based Garmin has finally won over the last big hold out in the certified aircraft market — Cirrus Design.
According to the post by Tom Haines, the G1000 (Perspective Option) does have some unique to Cirrus (for now) features including: Impressively large dual 12-inch displays, Garmin’s recently announced synthetic vision technology (SVT) and several crew alerting messages.
Another cool little feature Tom mentioned is: “…a blue “LVL” button on the GFC 700 autopilot mode controller. The LVL button is a pilot’s get-out-of-jail-free card when things are starting to go bad. Simply push the LVL button and no matter what mode the autopilot is in or even if it is off, the autopilot will roll the wings level and hold altitude.”
I am a little bit late to post on this, but according to the April 8th AOPA ePilot, Garmin has announced Synthetic Vision Technology (SVT) for their G1000 platform. SVT will allow for a 3D view of of terrain as you would see it on a VFR day. The best part? It is just a software upgrade, no additional hardware is required — a rare find in the world of avionics.
AOPA has posted a First Look video clip here. Of local Kansas City Interest, note the sample approach in the video is an approach into Lawrence, Kansas (KLWC).
Enjoy the show…try to keep the drool off the keyboard.
The family and I took a trip up to Omaha on Thanksgiving Day in the Diamond DA40XL. Weather was forecasted to be good, however, there was some warmer air aloft and I had some concerns of visibility due to the recent snow fall to our north (colder ground temperatures). The issue was that the Blair airport had no published instrument approaches. We decided to proceed with the flight as visibility was good (10+ miles), there were no icing concerns, and if we could not get VFR into Blaire, we’d go to Omaha International as our alternate. We’d also watch the XM Weather close on the flight up to see if the weather closed in on us en-route.
Read all the details after the jump.
Continue reading
This past weekend I had the chance to use my shiny new VFR/IFR checkout in the new Diamond DA40XL on an overnight cross country flight to Iowa with my family (minus the dogs). Get the details of the flight including lessons learned after the jump.