G1000 gotchas

spiderweb

Final Approach
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Ben
Admit it--you feel the need to read the "On The Record" or "I Learned About Flying From That" sections of flying magazines. It is helpful to us to see what others did, and hopefully learn from that!

So, as I get more and more comfy with the G1000, I want to ask the wise bloggership here, what kinds of "gotchas" have you or could you have potentially experienced, specifically with this system?

Thanks in advance!
 
Wow. I guess the G1000 is just THAT good.
 
i think that most of us (including me) do not fly with the G1000.
 
I have not had a "gotcha" with mine yet
knock on wood
 
The same gotchas as the GNS430 exist, such as making sure you're flying the right needle (VLOC/GPS), and studying up the ramifications of Load vs Activate approach :D

Spins in the G1000 will force you to look outside, it's totally useless for anything but the pitch recovery. Hunting for that little inclinometer-trapezoid thing is terrible when your head is swimming. I tend to be an "eyes inside" pilot, and it only took one turn in the spin (planned) to make me forget we had the nintendo onboard. :eek: In that way, it's probably a benefit, not a gotcha.

I wonder if the G1000 in twins increases the size of the "ball". I have only flown G1000-SE -- I'd hate to be doing high-workload engine-outs in IMC and wonder which way I'm yawing.

The map is really easy to pan with the cursor, and I think it's great, but if you get distracted while panned, you might forget and your little MFD airplane can fly off of the screen. Despite my eyes-inside handicap, I'm not an MFD-reliant pilot, so this doesn't bother me all that much.

The voice that announces "Traffic" is annoying.

With almost 4,000 hours TIS on ours, we're finding some maintenance gotchas and "intermittencies" that are maddening to troubleshoot, way worse than a normal stack. This is not an operational "gotcha" at all...

==

For the record, I think the benefits of the system outweigh any little operational quirks by a factor of 100. It's a really neat system.

$0.02

- Mike
 
I've been instructing in G1000 Cessnas for 3 years now, and the closest thing to a 'gotcha' is finding, once in a while, a different, maybe better, way to do something, especially after a S/W update.
In general we call the G1000 'cheating', especially for IFR :D
I fly lots of different planes (a benefit of being an instructor) and whenever I'm in a non-G1000 plane (including my own RV7A) the list of things 'missing' is long. Of course the thing missing from the other planes is the price tag. A G1000 (G900 for experimentals) panel costs more than what I have in my entire 7A.
 
i think that most of us (including me) do not fly with the G1000.

Well that -is- a good point! In this area, though, the flight schools are seriously phasing out the "old" panel aircraft.
 
The same gotchas as the GNS430 exist, such as making sure you're flying the right needle (VLOC/GPS), and studying up the ramifications of Load vs Activate approach :D

Spins in the G1000 will force you to look outside, it's totally useless for anything but the pitch recovery. Hunting for that little inclinometer-trapezoid thing is terrible when your head is swimming. I tend to be an "eyes inside" pilot, and it only took one turn in the spin (planned) to make me forget we had the nintendo onboard. :eek: In that way, it's probably a benefit, not a gotcha.

I wonder if the G1000 in twins increases the size of the "ball". I have only flown G1000-SE -- I'd hate to be doing high-workload engine-outs in IMC and wonder which way I'm yawing.

The map is really easy to pan with the cursor, and I think it's great, but if you get distracted while panned, you might forget and your little MFD airplane can fly off of the screen. Despite my eyes-inside handicap, I'm not an MFD-reliant pilot, so this doesn't bother me all that much.

The voice that announces "Traffic" is annoying.

With almost 4,000 hours TIS on ours, we're finding some maintenance gotchas and "intermittencies" that are maddening to troubleshoot, way worse than a normal stack. This is not an operational "gotcha" at all...

==

For the record, I think the benefits of the system outweigh any little operational quirks by a factor of 100. It's a really neat system.

$0.02

- Mike
Thanks for that! I am actually very interested to see how installations of the G1000 are adapted to twins. One thing I really like is the uniformity of the system between aircraft. Once you lean the system, its just a matter of learning the new airplane--but the information will be presented in a familiar way.
 
I've been instructing in G1000 Cessnas for 3 years now, and the closest thing to a 'gotcha' is finding, once in a while, a different, maybe better, way to do something, especially after a S/W update.
In general we call the G1000 'cheating', especially for IFR :D
I fly lots of different planes (a benefit of being an instructor) and whenever I'm in a non-G1000 plane (including my own RV7A) the list of things 'missing' is long. Of course the thing missing from the other planes is the price tag. A G1000 (G900 for experimentals) panel costs more than what I have in my entire 7A.

Right. Well, I guess I am lucky that as a renter, the G1000 aircraft are only $10 more per hour than the round-gauge paneled aircraft. And it really is true that one gets so much more in that panel!
 
If you are going to be flying them in a flight school environment (if they have quite a few planes), sometimes various planes have various versions of software. It can be frustrating at times, but its not really that big of a deal.
 
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