donkaye

I actually got a very good price on my upgrade. The downside was that it took 6 months.

That's unrealistic. I don't do that. I just have the student close their eyes for about a minute and fly the plane, then I take the airplane and put it into a more unusual attitude.

I have the GTX 335 and checked the lighting on the buttons tonight. They all lit up. You either have a settings issue or a wiring issue. The buttons should all light at night.

You can get the Garmin GTS 800 active traffic for $9,300 (That's what I paid). if you buy when Garmin has rebates, then it would cost even less. That's not much more than the cost stated above. Also, with the GTX 345 and GTS 800 you will get TargetTrend, one of the most valuable benefits of the Garmin package.

Does it interface with your autopilot? Where did you hear about it?

Who makes it? I have't seen one of those. Commercial or Experimental?

Trend is shown in magenta for Airspeed, Altitude, Turn rate, so acceleration is displayed for glass. For the Commercial Maneuvers, I agree, the legacy instruments are more of an assist.

Not so good in my opinion. It requires a scan the same as with legacy instruments. The tape glass scan is much faster.

I use my AOA on the glare shield for 1.3 Vso, then the airspeed tape on the G500 which, with a little experience, you can nail pretty well.

One advantage of being a little older--I did mine in a Cessna 150 for $8/hr wet and $10/hr for the instructor.

Sorry I don't know your name, NotarPilot, but thank you. I can't believe it, but I never noticed that menu bar before. Too focused on the reply.

My redundancy is related to information and quick access to it, not systems. Some would say having a second (GTN 650), third (Aera 796), or even fourth (iPad) GPS is way over the top, but different information can be presented on each, so they all serve each other well.

The Apple Emojis apparently won't work. Others apparently will. I think I will steal one from above. I have no idea why these work and others don't.

For a couple of reasons. First, you can get to several functions more quickly with the Shadin knob. Secondly, the one problem with the MVP-50 is that it only gives "fuel to waypoint" with no option for "fuel to destination". The Shading can be set up for "fuel to destination". Third, for redundancy. I do have other redundancy with that information on both the GTN 750 and GTN 650, but that also involves a lot more tapping.

I don't think there is another Mooney in the fleet including all new Acclaims that have an avionics setup like mine. It took a lot of planning and study to get exactly what I wanted---and I've already changed it twice since it was original completed, replacing the ESI 2000 with the ESI 500, the GMA 35 with the GMA 35c and the GTX 330ES with the GTX 335.

I would do the yokes in leather, but every wire in the yoke would have to be removed to take the yoke off. That includes autopilot, speed brakes, CWS, Recorder, Traffic Mute, Push to Command, and Transponder. Everything works now. Trying to troubleshoot yoke wiring after doing the yokes is just not on my agenda.

No, it's just that Ken buys a new airplane just about every year, so if he doesn't like the Avidyne box he can replace it with another airplane. (Still don't know how to get an Emoji entered. It keeps telling me no Emojis allowed. How did you do it?)

Did you go to the Map Setup page and make sure the airspaces you want displayed are enabled?

OK check this out in my plane. A friend did the first video. The next 2 were a demonstration of the ESI 500 that I had installed to replace the original ESI 2000 backup display. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5qVK4TLRrg&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=282JSodOg0c

Sorry, Ken, you're right, it was for the GTNs. I've never had a 530 so have never updated one. Personally, I think you are doing the right thing in getting the Avidyne. It's a plug-n-play situation, no downtime, just a learning curve.

A few differences between that comparison and my installation. GTN 750 (much bigger screen) $13.675; no charge for SD cards, no need for full TAWS with the G500 and Synthetic Vision (I do get alerting, just not RA alerting), have Garmin flight charts so no charge for that. I have Jepp on both the iPad and 796 on the yoke. So the cost really is $13,675 + $549 (FS210) = $14,224 or $13,675 + $1,499 (FS)510 = $15,174. This is less than the $16,999 for the 540 in both cases.

Ken, all downloads are via flygarmin.com directly from the Mac to the card. There is NO Windows restriction. If, when you go to flygarmin.com it gives you a Windows only option, that can be changed. I called Garmin on the same issue when I accidentally changed things to Windows. They had me go to a quick link of the flygarmin.com page and change it. When I go there now, I see a quick link to go to Windows. If I was in Windows it probably gives the link to the Mac. Hope this helps. If not call Garmin and they will set you straight. Just get up early, because recently they seem to be understaffed with long wait times.

I feel like I'm a Garmin "Deplorable". So I viewed this video. It is an interesting introduction to the Avidyne 440. It does have a lot of features. It also has a tremendous amount of button pushing--too much for me. Whatever the menu system is I personally don't like it. Some others apparently do, though. As deplorable as I may be, I am really glad to have my all Garmin simplistic panel. Regarding database upgrading, since the System 6.11 update to the GTNs and the institution of the new OnePak, I switched to the Garmin databases with no issues whatsoever. I'm looking forward to the System 6.21 update that has been TSO approved with STC approval expected in the next couple of days. With it you will have 2 choices for simple update; Download all databases to one card and through a Concierge program, after inserting that card into a GTN, it will transfer all the databases to other GTNs and G500; or Wifi all databases to an iPad and then Wifi all databases to a Flightstream 510 multimedia card that takes the place of a GTN card, and then that card will sync all databases to other Garmin GTNs and G500. Garmin continues to push the envelope in its own way.

Beechtalk has emojis to choose from--none here that I have found, although someone figured out how to add one.

I know a lot of people like the Avidyne GPS products. I can't comment on them, since no student I have had has one so I haven't studied them. (That should say something). So my question is, "Why would you want to ask for interface problems by going with multiple competing vendors who have no interest in inter compatibility." Even as Garmin put out the GTX 345, they won't have the software for the interface to the G500 until later this year. Going with Avidyne there will never be an interface should Avidyne do a software update to their products. Also Garmin continually has been upgrading their GTN series. I can't think of any function I would like to do that my GTNs can't do. Just food for thought, Paul.