Upgrading panel, what would you consider most important for IFR?

[EricJ]

1 hour ago, toto said:

The G5 normally has a built-in GPS too?

Yes.

 

[Ragsf15e]

12 minutes ago, EricJ said:

Yes.

 

As opposed to the one in the G3x which can be used for navigation (vfr), the one in the g5 only there to help stabilize the ahrs… i.e. it’s not able to be used to navigate.  or am I remembering that wrong?

[McMooney]

7 hours ago, dkkim73 said:

Not apples to apples, but: The G1000 has an intrinsically dual-redundant design on the COM/NAV/GPS and FMS-type functions, which I've come to appreciate. It all depends on your use case, but for people flying IFR in a way that requires a lot of RNAV (e.g. clearances to fixes, etc), it is insurance. 

The boxes seem to glitch out more than the old navigators (GNS430/530), so it's not directly comparable. But as I recall the old 430/540 (+-W) design gives you the redundancy of both modes. 

I'd probably be wary of going down to just one IFR-certified GPS, these days, but it all depends on your flying. I'd also never give up VOR/ILS, but then again I'd suffer the weight to add DME (cheap) or ADF (free), so color me old-fashioned. 

I do agree that most of the time it's going to be an outage or jamming thing. 

 

I kept my DME, couldn't figure out a reason to get rid of it, it does exactly what it's supposed to do.

ILS absolutely

VOR don't care,  most i would use are notam'd out

[toto]

15 minutes ago, Ragsf15e said:

As opposed to the one in the G3x which can be used for navigation (vfr), the one in the g5 only there to help stabilize the ahrs… i.e. it’s not able to be used to navigate.  or am I remembering that wrong?

It seems to have been designed as a standalone navigation unit in addition to being an AP head. But I confess that I don’t know how you’d navigate using only a G5 in the event of a GTN failure. 

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/aviation/g5-not-just-backup-good-enough-starting-lineup/

Maybe some of this functionality is disabled in the certified version. 

[Max Clark]

16 hours ago, toto said:

The G5 normally has a built-in GPS too?

It will display from a NAV but not built in.

[Vance Harral]

2 hours ago, Max Clark said:

It will display from a NAV but not built in.

That's not exactly correct, but it gets a little complicated.

The G5 absolutely has a built-in GPS, but its purpose is only to provide positional data over time to allow the instrument to correct for gyro drift.  It is not designed to provide nav information or data for a moving map.  In particular, I'm not aware of any way to configure a G5 to output its GPS data to another device via its CANBUS or RS-232 outputs.

The G5 installation manual allows you to provide GPS data to the G5 for drift connection from another device instead of using the built-in GPS receiver, e.g. you can wire an RS-232 output from a GTN 650 to the G5 and leave the internal GPS disabled.  A lot of installations are set up this way because it's less expensive to run the RS-232 connection than it is to purchase and install the additional GPS antenna that is otherwise required.

It's been a while since I looked at the installation manual, but my recollection is that if you're super paranoid, you can connect both the RS-232 setup and also an external GPS antenna, and set up the G5 to fail over from one to the other source.  Again, though, this stuff only has to do with gyro drift correction, nothing to do with navigation.

It's also my recollection that loss of GPS data won't cause your G5 to kill you with totally invalid attitude information if GPS signal is lost.  It's still good enough to keep the greasy side down, it just doesn't quite meet certification accuracy requirements without GPS correction.

[Flyler]

17 hours ago, McMooney said:

I kept my DME, couldn't figure out a reason to get rid of it, it does exactly what it's supposed to do.

ILS absolutely

VOR don't care,  most i would use are notam'd out

I am here to learn- do you find that there are enough DME's still usable as opposed to VOR's?

[Max Clark]

2 hours ago, Flyler said:

I am here to learn- do you find that there are enough DME's still usable as opposed to VOR's?

I had to think about this for a bit. I'm not aware of any non VOR DME navaids that aren't connected to a localizer.

[McMooney]

3 hours ago, Flyler said:

I am here to learn- do you find that there are enough DME's still usable as opposed to VOR's?

All ILS i've ever used have an associated DME and if i ever actually need a VOR that's working and if it has DME, i want that to work also.

keeping it actually made my IR checkride super easy,  DPE failed the GPS on an ILS approach  then questioned what i would do at that point.  I pointed at the DME  continued the approach, walked away IR rated.

Edited January 27 by McMooney

[Flyler]

Thank you both above for the knowledge. My new J has a DME and I still have yet to turn it on. Hoping to get a little of my buttonology down, and general acquaintance before starting IR training. 

[47U]

I kept my DME, even found a new gas-discharge display for it so it should last for quite a while.

Maybe not common, if the VOR is on the airport, when flying the ILS you might need to tune the DME to the VOR frequency because the DME is not on the localizer frequency.  

And then there’s weird(?) at least in my mind.  The ILS RW 33 at Beale doesn’t have a DME on the localizer.  It’s on the TACAN frequency.  Do don’t have a TACAN?  What to do?  

You turn to the DME frequency, 108.6, but it’s not listed on the approach plate, or VFR chart, but instead it’s on the low chart, in the TACAN label.  The military does their own approach plates.  I keep 108.6 in my DME for easy reference I’m clear of the TFR, when not talking to NORCAL.

[Ragsf15e]

11 minutes ago, 47U said:

I kept my DME, even found a new gas-discharge display for it so it should last for quite a while.

Maybe not common, if the VOR is on the airport, when flying the ILS you might need to tune the DME to the VOR frequency because the DME is not on the localizer frequency.  

And then there’s weird(?) at least in my mind.  The ILS RW 33 at Beale doesn’t have a DME on the localizer.  It’s on the TACAN frequency.  Do don’t have a TACAN?  What to do?  

You turn to the DME frequency, 108.6, but it’s not listed on the approach plate, or VFR chart, but instead it’s on the low chart, in the TACAN label.  The military does their own approach plates.  I keep 108.6 in my DME for easy reference I’m clear of the TFR, when not talking to NORCAL.

Yep, all the tacans have some corresponding dme freq.  if you tune a tacan it automatically uses it, however, if to get dme off the tacan separately, you gotta find the freq.

[PT20J]

There are addional points to consider in the WAAS vs non-WAAS discussion beyond LPV approach capability.

Non-WAAS navigators were certified under TSO C129 as supplemental navigation systems and have some limitations worth noting. WAAS units were certified under TSO C146 as stand-alone navigation systems and remove these restrictions.

AOPA has a good summary here: https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/advocacy-briefs/air-traffic-services-brief-wide-area-augmentation-system-waas

[midlifeflyer]

Thanks for the comments on my side question about dual GPS units. It's given me some excellent  ideas. 

[Will.iam]

Anybody use the trig T56A? 

[47U]

2 hours ago, Will.iam said:

Anybody use the trig T56A? 

Several years ago when I was doing panel work, besides the SL30, the TX56A was the only nav/comm that fit in my center stack, and I thought that SL30s were getting pretty old.  The Garmin 1.3” nav/comm was still a couple years away.  I picked up a used KI-204 from a guy on the field for the CDI and it’s also is connected to an Aspen (for redundancy).  My avionics guy had me pick up a box off e-Bay to auto-pair the frequency on the DME-890.

Coming from a late ‘70s Narco panel, I have zero complaints. 

[Will.iam]

Can you display dme off the trig?

[47U]

1 hour ago, Will.iam said:

Can you display dme off the trig?

No, the TX56A does not show any DME data.  To clarify, when I put the VOR frequency in the Trig, the DME can be set to auto-tune to that same frequency.    

[Will.iam]

1 minute ago, 47U said:

No, the TX56A does not show any DME data.  To clarify, when I put the VOR frequency in the Trig, the DME can be set to auto-tune to that same frequency.    

So would the dme show up on say a kn-64 from the trig feeding it?

[47U]

7 minutes ago, Will.iam said:

So would the dme show up on say a kn-64 from the trig feeding it?

Certainly it should, and you might not even need the Bendix-King KA-120 serial/parallel convertor that I needed to be able to slave frequency tuning from the Trig to the DME-890.  

My avionics guy explained it all to me… like I would understand FM.

[Fly Boomer]

1 hour ago, 47U said:

My avionics guy explained it all to me… like I would understand FM.

That made me laugh.  Everybody thinks it's love that makes the world go around but it's not.  It's FM.