/G finally!

[denverpilot]

Wow. Flew the airplane back from the shop with the co-owner today and it’s like being in a different century. GTN 650, GTX 345, MidContinent OBS, and Flightstream 510.

Holy crap that was fun. Even had the co-owner fly all the way home under the hood and his first practice LPV approach. Haha. A couple of times I told him to cheat so he could see traffic vs what the ADS-B traffic was showing.

But wow. That was cool.

Perhaps a new Garmin A/P and G5s are in our future but for now, this is pretty dang nice compared to steam!

 

[jordane93]

Welcome to the 21st century!

 

[Stingray Don]

Wow. Flew the airplane back from the shop with the co-owner today and it’s like being in a different century. GTN 650, GTX 345, MidContinent OBS, and Flightstream 510.

Holy crap that was fun. Even had the co-owner fly all the way home under the hood and his first practice LPV approach. Haha. A couple of times I told him to cheat so he could see traffic vs what the ADS-B traffic was showing.

But wow. That was cool.

Perhaps a new Garmin A/P and G5s are in our future but for now, this is pretty dang nice compared to steam!

I love my 650. I never realized how much traffic I wasn’t seeing with my eyeballs.

 

[RyanB]

 

[eman1200]

alright one two seven niner monkey!

 

[denverpilot]

alright one two seven niner monkey!

Monkey Direct?

 

[AggieMike88]

When you get more time with it, I'm curious about the 510

 

[denverpilot]

When you get more time with it, I'm curious about the 510

Initial report is: It works.

Forgot to test AHRS. Everything else played on ForeFlight.

Weather, Radar, traffic, sync back and forth with flightplans, it just did it all.

Don’t know if it’s a setting but it made sense... push a flight plan from ForeFlight to the panel, the panel gets a message and basically asks (are you sure?)... going the other way, any change made on the panel, approach loaded, whatever, just “magically” updated ForeFlight.

Haven’t tried Garmin Pilot yet. My old trial expired but we get another now...

Only confusing thing so far was the WiFi never showed up — it did it all over Bluetooth, but we’ve been told that’s because the WiFi is only for database updates if you go the wireless route on that.

Lemme know what else you’re interested in, but I couldn’t find any problems with it so far.

Only squawk so far is our EGT gauge is acting a little wonky. I think maybe the shunt resistor got knocked loose doing the wiring harness. Haven’t looked yet but it’s about half of its usual scale.

Tested out the alerts from the GTX 345 also, it altitude alerts when off by a whole bunch (looked like 300’?) if we turned on the altitude alerter, etc. It’s wired into the “always on” audio input of the audio panel.

We also noticed on the ground that the keyclicks (if they’re turned on) on the GTN are coming out of the overhead speaker, and the speaker wasn’t selected. Interesting.

Will have to play with that one some more and see what else is coming out of the speaker. Maybe all the GTN noises? And the GTX noises? Anyway, very minor squawks and possibly working as designed.

 

[denverpilot]

I love my 650. I never realized how much traffic I wasn’t seeing with my eyeballs.

That. Was a little eerie. Knew they were there, couldn’t see all of them.

Saw the C-130 vectored under us at KCOS, though. He was pretty easy to spot.

 

[GLMS_NC]

Oh yeah...The G5 is cool too and you will like. Bye-bye steam....

 

[frfly172]

Nice

 

[Zeldman]

All that plus the Navomatic A/P...!!!!!!

 

[AggieMike88]

Saw the C-130 vectored under us at KCOS, though. He was pretty easy to spot.

Been flying with a C130 going into Fort Worth Navy was called out to me.

My response was "55WB has old smokey in sight". That power setting he was using was leaving a very long black trail of exhaust.

 

[denverpilot]

All that plus the Navomatic A/P...!!!!!!

We forgot to warn the avionics guy that was working on our airplane how bad that thing really is. He said he troubleshot for like an hour thinking he broke it. We felt bad. Ha.

When we got there he said, “Don’t use that autopilot for anything real. “ LOL. Which was what @jesse said about it years ago, too. Haha. I think his statement was, “It flies just well enough to kill you.”

He shared that he got it to behave a little bit and it just doesn’t want to turn left anymore. The servo is noisy.

I told him we knew it sucked and it’s in the OFF position 99.99% of the time. Once in a while we turn it on for a laugh at how bad it is, VMC only.

 

[Zeldman]

We forgot to warn the avionics guy that was working on our airplane how bad that thing really is. He said he troubleshot for like an hour thinking he broke it. We felt bad. Ha.

When we got there he said, “Don’t use that autopilot for anything real. “ LOL. Which was what @jesse said about it years ago, too. Haha. I think his statement was, “It flies just well enough to kill you.”

He shared that he got it to behave a little bit and it just doesn’t want to turn left anymore. The servo is noisy.

I told him we knew it sucked and it’s in the OFF position 99.99% of the time. Once in a while we turn it on for a laugh at how bad it is, VMC only.

I am surprised that it does anything at all when turned on. I have only seen one that actually works, and it worked in heading mode only...

 

[Clark1961]

Saw the C-130 vectored under us at KCOS, though. He was pretty easy to spot.

I had to ask Springs approach what the C-130 was doing after he turned into me after crossing 1,000’ under me. Springs seemed to have the attitude “why should you care?” and they hadn’t called him out as traffic.

 

[denverpilot]

I had to ask Springs approach what the C-130 was doing after he turned into me after crossing 1,000’ under me. Springs seemed to have the attitude “why should you care?” and they hadn’t called him out as traffic.

Looked like they were doing laps (two of then) around and around KCOS. Springs Approach didn’t call them out to us, either. Their patterns were like five miles around.

 

[denverpilot]

By the way @Clark1961 seeing all the Doss traffic and the other eight in the pattern at the Academy plus four in the pattern at KFLY, only about four total I ever saw with my eyeballs, and one of those because I caught his shadow on the ground passing under our nose... made me want to go further east away from KCOS more often. Haha.

 

[deonb]

I had to ask Springs approach what the C-130 was doing after he turned into me after crossing 1,000’ under me. Springs seemed to have the attitude “why should you care?” and they hadn’t called him out as traffic.

Should have replied: “Cause I don’t want to roll him with my wake turbulence!”

 

[MickYoumans]

Congrats on the avionics upgrade! I put a GTN650 & GTX345 in my plane this past summer so I could work on my instrument rating. So far I really like the combo. It is a pleasure to fly with.

 

[denverpilot]

Oh yeah...The G5 is cool too and you will like. Bye-bye steam....

The only downside appears to be that our shop is already booked through June. Even if we ordered them today, we wouldn’t be installing until late summer. And we probably wouldn’t consider ordering until we’ve paid ourselves back a bit for the stuff we just put in.

I doubt their schedule will get any better as 2020 moves closer. Only worse.

 

[denverpilot]

Congrats on the avionics upgrade! I put a GTN650 & GTX345 in my plane this past summer so I could work on my instrument rating. So far I really like the combo. It is a pleasure to fly with.

I’m impressed with how intuitive they made it. I could argue a few things they did in the UI but really, even stuff that’s “kinda hard” in the 430/530 is just done better in the GTN so far.

What I didn’t know was they’d added the pinch to zoom in a software update somewhere along the way. I was piddling around with the zoom buttons and my co-owner reaches up and pinches the screen. Hahaha. Oh! So they added that, did they?? Hahaha.

I have some reading to do.

 

[RyanB]

Oh yeah...The G5 is cool too and you will like. Bye-bye steam....

I’ll 2nd that!

 

[MickYoumans]

There is a "GTN Trainer" app you can download for your iPad. While my GTN650 was being installed, I downloaded a PDF of the owners manual to real through. I had not flown with a 430W or 650 so I had to basicly learn from scratch. Between reading the manual and playing with the GTN Trainer app, by the time I went to pick up my airplane, I had no problem finding my way around the GTN to fly home.

 

[MickYoumans]

I also forgot to mention that I have an EI CGR-30P engine monitor that is linked to my GTN650. It feeds fuel flow and quantity to the GTN. The GTN has a neat feature for fuel management that uses this data to calculate the fuel needed for your flight and and show how much reserve you will have in both time and gallons when you reach your destination.

 

[denverpilot]

There is a "GTN Trainer" app you can download for your iPad. While my GTN650 was being installed, I downloaded a PDF of the owners manual to real through. I had not flown with a 430W or 650 so I had to basicly learn from scratch. Between reading the manual and playing with the GTN Trainer app, by the time I went to pick up my airplane, I had no problem finding my way around the GTN to fly home.

Yeah I got started late on the brain prep but decided I knew what La Veta Pass, Pueblo, Colorado Springs then home... looked like out the window. So I decided to use the flight as a “how intuitive is this thing?” test.

I watched like three YT videos and read a website. Seriously. That’s it. (Oh and @midlifeflyer ‘s couple of video tips on oddball things, just for fun on YT also) and knew I could get it to do VFR direct stuff without any brainpower whatsoever.

I’ll obviously study up more for approaches and procedures, but even setting up — what is it, like my sixth ever GPS Approach? — was nearly mindless. Yes, like the 430/530 before it there’s a couple of “gotchas” with things like Vectors to Final and sequencing, but even when I botched it the screen and map are so much better, SA was never poor and seeing that it was “navigating to nowhere” was really really obvious.

Getting LPV nav to the end of the airport that doesn’t have an ILS was beyond nifty. So much win.

It was like trading in a black and white TV for what @FastEddieB just threw up on his mantle.

And the iPad integration with the Flightstream 510? Whoa. Definitely worth the cost of admittance for that. I’m piddling with it the entire cruise portion of the flight, pulling up PIREPs over Kansas from airliners complaining about the winter turbulence in the Flight Levels... wow.

I still have my qualms about ADS-B, but man they know how to sucker you in with toys to becoming part of the surveillance state.

 

[denverpilot]

I also forgot to mention that I have an EI CGR-30P engine monitor that is linked to my GTN650. It feeds fuel flow and quantity to the GTN. The GTN has a neat feature for fuel management that uses this data to calculate the fuel needed for your flight and and show how much reserve you will have in both time and gallons when you reach your destination.

We poked fuel on board and an estimated burn into it when it asked, but never saw much use of that data after that. Another thing to dig in the manual for. We don’t have a fuel flow gauge for it to link to (yet?).

 

[midlifeflyer]

You'll enjoy being part of the surveillance state, @denverpilot. After all, given the great toys, "Resistance is futile."

 

[bnt83]

We poked fuel on board and an estimated burn into it when it asked, but never saw much use of that data after that. Another thing to dig in the manual for. We don’t have a fuel flow gauge for it to link to (yet?).

If you hook the GTN to a an EI/JPI fuel flow via RS232 it picks up the fuel quantity you set on the instrument and fuel burn rate and will plot that on the moving map in "yellow and green range rings" The smaller ring is user adjustable in minutes fuel reserve and outer ring you're out of fuel.

You will only see WiFi at initial boot up of the GTN, it will interrogate your iPad for data updates but I'm pretty sure that's a Garmin Pilot feature only.

 

[Larry in TN]

We're living in the future!

 

[Ravioli]

We'll go G5 when the HSI fails. I'm just afraid someone will 'help it fail' to get it done sooner.

But, the 430 WAAS upgrade is underway and the GTX345 is sitting at the shop so they can both go in together.

Anyone want to buy a GTX327? (I know, not here, it will probably go quickly on VAF though)

 

[BGF_Yankee]

I love my 650. I never realized how much traffic I wasn’t seeing with my eyeballs.

And now I'm scared to fly!! EEEEK!!! lol

 

[eman1200]

I'm sure I'm stating the obvious, but you do have traffic filter settings on the 650 that narrow down the traffic that's shown. just in case y'alls weren't awares.

 

[BGF_Yankee]

I'm sure I'm stating the obvious, but you do have traffic filter settings on the 650 that narrow down the traffic that's shown. just in case y'alls weren't awares.

I go back and forth on how I want it filtered depending on around what airspace I am. I wish there was a way to set custom filters rather than the factory defaults. Usually I leave it on unrestricted though on both my 650 and 796.

 

[Radar Contact]

We'll go G5 when the HSI fails. I'm just afraid someone will 'help it fail' to get it done sooner.

But, the 430 WAAS upgrade is underway and the GTX345 is sitting at the shop so they can both go in together.

Anyone want to buy a GTX327? (I know, not here, it will probably go quickly on VAF though)

I sold (gave away) mine to a guy on here for 250. Didn't want to deal with the ebay hassle.

 

[denverpilot]

I'm sure I'm stating the obvious, but you do have traffic filter settings on the 650 that narrow down the traffic that's shown. just in case y'alls weren't awares.

Was aware, but ALL of that traffic yesterday was within two miles and 2000’. Not sure I want those “filtered”. LOL. KCOS airspace is a zoo.

 

[MickYoumans]

I still have my GTX327 in a box in my hangar from my GTN650/GTX345 upgrade this past summer. I haven't tried very hard to sell it. I think it was originally installed in 2013 and is still like new.

 

[murphey]

Was aware, but ALL of that traffic yesterday was within two miles and 2000’. Not sure I want those “filtered”. LOL. KCOS airspace is a zoo.

If you stay above 11.5 between PUB and Monument, zoomie & Doss traffic is irrelevant. COS will call United traffic as it takes off to the east.

 

[Clark1961]

Was aware, but ALL of that traffic yesterday was within two miles and 2000’. Not sure I want those “filtered”. LOL. KCOS airspace is a zoo.

Most of them didn’t bother me. That friggin’ C-130 that ATC didn’t seem to care about bothered me. Then some other guy decided 30 miles south of DEN was a good place to practice maneuvers at 9,000’. Approach gave me a Bravo clearance so I could avoid him. Next time I’m just going out east and avoid the whole mess.