toto

Ugh, that’s not good. For whatever it’s worth, I’ve had different support experiences with phone vs email support - you might try the “other” one if you haven’t already. I know that Trek Lawler retired - is there a new Garmin rep that frequents MooneySpace these days?

Ha, okay - I clearly haven't been there in a while

Technically you could still buy the Century 2000 that came in my a/c brand new today for $30,000 plus installation. I've always been mystified about why Century has these listed for sale on their website, but maybe there's some aircraft out there somewhere that isn't on any AML for a modern autopilot and has the Century 2000 on the type certificate.

Garmin support is fantastic. As much as I sometimes grumble about their policies or about their corporate/competitive behavior, working with Garmin support is always a pleasant experience, and it’s much better than working with almost any other support organization. This is especially true for aviation products (which I guess makes sense, since many of us could have bought a modest-sized house for the amount of money we’ve spent on Garmin aviation gizmos ).

There’s a nice YouTube series on Colorado flying by @Christian, called “Man and a Mooney” - he does Leadville and a bunch of other high country airports. Well worth a watch.

Do you know what the GPS position is actually used for when you’re flying an ILS? Everything I’ve seen from Garmin is vague on this.

Maybe. The scenario @PT20J is describing is one where the GFC continues operating with the VFR GPS from the G3X after the GTN GPS fails. My AFMS doesn’t address this directly. As I understand it, you can even use an Aera 760 as a position source for the GFC 500, but I would have to assume that it would still revert to heading mode when the GTN GPS dies.

This is interesting. My AFMS is vague on the GPS source, and doesn’t clearly say whether the source must be an approach certified GPS or not. If your GTN GPS fails and the GFC begins using the G3X GPS, do you need to take a manual action to restore approach mode?

I don’t think the Aerocruze has been approved for coupled approaches. So the AP will *fly* a coupled approach, but it’s prohibited by the AFMS.

Nice

This might be true from a dollars and cents perspective, but I disagree pretty strongly that it’s the better outcome. Everyone makes decisions on their panel upgrades, and when you buy the upgraded panel, those decisions have already been made. Some of these are pretty serious compromises that would cost as much to undo as they would cost to do in the first place, and you’ll just have to live with it (or pay half again as much as you would have paid for the run-out panel). A lot of this stuff is very subjective, and every plane I’ve been in with a panel that was upgraded at high cost by someone else leaves me scratching my head over one thing or another. Why did they put the AP control head here instead of there? Why did they burn so much real estate on a DME or an old Stormscope? Why did they combine Aspen with Garmin? Whatever .. lots of things that were probably perfect for the owner/pilot but that I would have done differently myself.

I think if you want a Garmin AP for a J model, the GFC-500 is the only option. The big advantage with the Aerocruze (nee TruTrak) is that the installation time is about half the GFC time, because they install all of the servos under the seats in the passenger compartment. But as @Pinecone said, there's a lot of unknowns. So unless you're wanting a bottom-dollar installation, the Garmin is your best bet. And if you want bottom dollar, there's always this thing https://www.portapilot.com/ (Not yet available for the Mooney) (And that was mostly a joke) (Even though it's kind of an interesting idea)

Yep, it’s definitely a nice feature. Confirmed with the Garmin marketing materials btw:

Synthetic vision comes for free with the G3X. I don’t believe it’s a paid option (at least, it came with mine and I didn’t have to do anything special to get it ).

Looks like substantial damage from an electrical fire in 2014: https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/290395

But so if you’re a member of the public (i.e., another GA pilot, no connection with the airline) and you see a 121 pilot doing this stuff, could you call a safety hotline at the union to report it and expect that they’ll follow up?

I thought the scenario here was a pilot struggling with possible mental health issues, alcohol abuse, impaired flying judgment and failure to report all this stuff on medical applications?

Out of curiosity, does the airline pilots union have a safety hotline or something that would allow anonymous reports of suspected bad behavior? I would think that they would have better resources to address this sort of thing, and could address it quietly where appropriate (or noisily where not). (I know this thread is about GA and not about 121, but I’m genuinely curious.)

I have a pretty similar new panel and a pretty similar box of old crap from my 89J, but you’re ahead of me on bothering to post it One of these days I’ll get the camera out .. I know there was somebody looking for an NSD-360A a while back, but it sounds like you might have replaced that previously with a G5 HSI?

I know almost nothing about helicopters, so it might be that hover ability is more impressive than flying around ability - no idea. But if I were flying a home-built helicopter with a rotor driven by a little rubber belt, I'd probably stay pretty close to the ground too

They'll sell you a factory built one for not that much more money Part 103 is an interesting world.

The website suggests that the XET turbine engine is about $15k on top of the kit. The single seat design is (I assume) to meet Part 103 restrictions - which would not apply to the turbine, but would apply to the piston models. They also have a fully electric model now

You can get a turbine mosquito for about 60 grand

When we move from a better product to a worse product, we typically say “moving down”

I think we can all agree that 1989 is the year that everything just came together in perfect harmony for the J model