New Advanced Avionics Handbook

For many years it seemed that the FAA's handbooks on aircraft flying, aeronautical knowledge, instrument flying, and weather were hopelessly outdated. Yet in the last two years there have been several updates to these publications that included new graphics and information on the latest equipment, theory, and sources of weather data. All of these books are available in PDF format at no charge, which helps reduce the cost of learning to fly or earning an instrument rating.

One of the books that caught my eye when it first came out was the FAA's Instrument Procedures Handbook. This completely new publication provided much needed information on ATC procedures, instrument approaches, and other stuff that was missing or inappropriate for inclusion in the Instrument Flying Handbook.

The latest new release from the FAA is the Advanced Avionics Handbook, which provides a lot of good conceptual information on the use of GPS and RNAV. This book does not depend on any particular brand of GPS or glass cockpit, which makes it great introduction to pilots who are considering or curious about glass cockpit or GPS training. This book touches on GPS and RNAV procedures, pitfalls, and recommended practices in a way that is independent of the model of GPS, PFD, or MFD that you might use.

While this book is not a substitute for thorough training in the use of your particular brand of avionics, it's a great way to get a leg up on transitioning to a glass cockpit or to a GPS-equipped aircraft. Even if you are experienced in using advanced avionics you should find this book contains good advice and explanations on pitfalls and common errors.

And did I mention you can download it for free? I think I did ...

Who's got The Button

With all the activity surrounding my ferry flight, I've had precious little time to keep up with happenings in aviation. As I made my way through the backlog of reading over the last few days, I noticed that Cirrus has released a version of their SR22 aircraft with a G1000 system instead of the usual Avidyne system. And in classic Cirrus fashion, their marketing team assures us that they are not just jumping on the G1000 bandwagon, no sir. This G1000 has been Cirrusized. The main differences between the usual G1000 and the Cirrusized G1000 are fairly limited, but in addition to the SVS option (Cirrus refers to it as "Perspective") there are some are big improvements.

First, the screens are 12" instead of 10" because bigger is better, right? Well at least there will be room for more fingerprints on the screen surface. The second difference is that this G1000 installation provides a keypad, something that has heretofore been limited to a few aircraft like the Columbia, Mooney, Bonanza, and Baron. If you ask me, all G1000 installations cry out for a simpler way to enter waypoints and limiting the keypad installation seems like more of a marketing gimmick that anything else. But look closely at the keypad and autopilot interface, because there is something revolutionary here.

One of my biggest gripes with the G1000 has been the design of the BARO knob (used to set the barometric pressure for the altimeter) and the CRS knob (used to set the HSI course when in VOR mode or in GPS with OBS mode engaged). In the traditional G1000, these two knobs are concentric with the large outer knob being the BARO setting and the smaller, inner knob being the CRS knob. If I had five dollars for every time I saw a pilot inadvertently change the BARO setting when they meant to adjust the HSI course, well I could have already retired and be sitting on the porch of my beach house, sipping rum from a glass with a little umbrella.

Next to the Cirrus keypad are heading, course, and altitude select knobs. These knobs no longer appear on the G1000 PFD or MFD. That's right, the combined CRS/BARO knobs are no more in the Cirrus. What's more, the frequently used heading and altitude select knobs are in a separate, easy to remember location. Pretty cool.

The other Cirrus difference is an additional button on the autopilot interface labeled LVL, which is being referred to as the Blue Button or the Panic Button. The idea is that if you enter an unusual attitude that does not exceed 75˚ of bank and/or 50˚ of pitch, pressing the LVL button will engage the autopilot and should bring you back to straight and level. I think having a single button to level the aircraft could be a handy thing during high workload moments, but a button for unusual attitude recovery?

One of the most basic skills an instrument pilot learns is to recover from an unusual attitude, especially when they are experiencing spatial disorientation - their inner ear is telling them something that is at odds with what their instruments are telling them. There are two basic unusual attitude scenarios: Nose up and nose down. A common mistake when trying to recover from an unusual attitude is failing to control airspeed, so the first thing to do is look at the airspeed indication. A fast or increasing airspeed means the nose of the plane is pointed down. A slow or decreasing airspeed means the plane is pointed up. I train my instrument students to initiate recovery by adjusting power first.

When recovering from a nose-up unusual attitude, I teach instrument candidates to think "stall recovery": Full power, reduce the pitch attitude, then level the wings. Nose-up unusual attitudes are often caused by a malfunctioning, runaway pitch trim. If that's the case, I can't imagine that the LVL button is going to be of any use since it relies on pitch trim which has malfunctioned.

The nose-down pitch recovery requires that the pilot initiate a spiral dive recovery, just like you learned when you first tried steep turns as a student pilot: Reduce power to idle, level the wings to reduce load on the airframe, then pitch up. If you don't level the wings before pitching up, you not only risk over-stressing the airframe, you may only succeed in steepening the bank angle with the resultant altitude loss and increase in airspeed - referred to by some as the JFK Jr. syndrome.

Assuming the Cirrus autopilot doesn't have autothrottle capability, I can't imagine how the level button can level the aircraft without potentially overstressing the airframe. Perhaps the designers are relying on the rigidity of the Cirrus composite airframe and its hugely effective ailerons. One would assume that they have tested this system and found it works satisfactorily, but I'm still curious.

More importantly, I wonder if this kind of system is going to breed a new kind of instrument pilot with questionable instrument flying skills. It seems doubtful that designated examiners will allow pilots to use the LVL button when demonstrating unusual attitude recovery during an instrument rating check ride, so maybe we're safe for now.

The one thing I wish Cirrus would fix is their own button design. Cirrus needs to protect important bolster switches from being inadvertently turned off. I actually had a student do this during an ILS in actual conditions. Reaching for the heading bug knob, we hit a big bump, his hand came down squarely on the avionics switch, the switch went off, and all the screens and G430s went dark. In Cirrus' G1000 design, the PFD softkeys are very close to the bolster switches and it's easy to imagine bumping one while trying to access a softkey in turbulent conditions. Perhaps they can Cirrusize that problem away ...

New Publications

Visit the FAA's website and you'll find a revised version of the Instrument Flying Handbook that has finally caught up with modern avionics. The new handbook shows instrument attitude flying techniques for glass panel aircraft, discusses autopilots and flight directors, and terrain and weather systems. The book contains a lot of new, four-color illustrations. They even have color representation of ALSF-I and ALSF-II approach lighting systems. And best of all, you can download it for free.

There's also a document I had not seen before - Powered Parachute Flying Handbook.

Check it out!

Flying in a 'lectronic World, Part II

Virtually all aviation GPS equipment manufacturers have failed to acknowledge that pilots fly aircraft in three dimensions, not just two. Granted, low-altitude IFR en route charts, high-altitude charts, and area charts by their very printed-on-paper nature are two-dimensional. Approach charts provide the third dimension (altitude) in a crude way using a profile view. And on non-precision approaches, IFR-certified GPS units seem to have been specifically designed to provide no vertical navigation at all, not even an awareness of step-down altitudes, which was left up to the pilot. But with the new WAAS-enabled G1000, it looks a new era has begun.

Computing accurate rates of descent or climb is a really good job for a computer, especially in single-pilot operations where the pilot has other things to occupy his or her time and where descending too soon, or too rapidly, can be dangerous. The new G1000 lets you enter a desired altitude for each waypoint in a GPS flight plan along and here's the radical part: A Vertical Descent Indicator (VDI) and Required Vertical Speed Indicator (RVSI) will appear on the primary flight display and actually provide vertical guidance based on your current ground speed. This is something that pilots have needed since the inception of IFR GPS and in most units has only been available in a very rudimentary form, usually limited to just one flight plan waypoint. Not any more.

The G1000 flight plan interface on the Primary Flight Display (PFD) is much more simplified than the Multi-Function Display (MFD). As you're creating your flight plan (or when editing an existing flight plan), you may notice that the MFD's flight plan interface on the new G1000 contains altitude fields. Press the small FMS knob, scroll with the large knob to the field where you want to enter a value, then turn the small FMS knob to start entering an altitude or offset.



An annoying feature is that you enter altitudes one digit at a time, starting with tens of thousands of feet: Turn the small FMS knob to set each digit and scroll to the next digit with the large knob. And when you are done entering a value, press ENTER to save the value. If you press the small FMS knob (which I have seen pilots do thousands of times), you'll jump out of cursor mode without saving anything. This is infuriating if you've just invested several seconds entering an altitude. Garmin perfected the same sort of dumb user interface policy in the 430/530 products. You'd think they would have come up with a simpler, more efficient, and more intuitive way ...

The new G1000 also has an Along Track Offset (or ATK OFST) feature. The name may be counterintuitive, but enter the Flight Plan page, press the small FMS knob, use the big FMS knob to highlight the flight plan waypoint for which you wish to specify an altitude, then press the ATK OFST button. You can now specify a distance from a waypoint and a crossing altitude, which results in the creation of a new waypoint in the flight plan. The name of this feature may be dumb, but the feature itself is quite useful.



The Avidyne CMax chart display is pretty good in that in shows your position on the actual chart (circled in red), but accessing a chart requires a strange sequence of button pushes. And navigating back out of the chart display is equally convoluted.



The G1000's NACO chart display is similar to the electronic charts provided on the Cirrus' Avidyne, but these charts aren't a substitute for paper charts. The G1000 provides a soft key (circled in red on the lower right side of the MFD) that makes it very easy to display these charts from the map view and then quickly return to the map view, but there are several disadvantages. The NACO charts don't show your current position on the approach chart like the CMax displays do. When you display a NACO chart on the G1000, the moving map display goes away as does your terrain awareness and the TIS traffic display. Some of this information can still be displayed in the inset map on the PFD, but that inset map is pretty small.




One of the coolest features of the new G1000 is it's ability, when coupled to the KAP 140 autopilot, to automatically fly course reversal and holding pattern entries. For this to work, the holding pattern must be part of a defined procedure: The G1000 doesn't allow you to specify your own holding pattern like the older GNS480 does. Here is a sequence of photos of the G1000 and KAP 140 autopilot flying the SCK ILS RWY 29R by proceeding direct to the SC LOM, flying a teardrop entry, and finally getting established on the localizer.








If you are flying a GPS or RNAV approach, the G1000 and KAP 140 should automatically fly the course reversal and get you established on the intermediate approach course. You'll have to initiate the descent using the autopilot and I still have not discovered why the KAP 140 will not fly a GPS glide path.

If you're flying a localizer, ILS, or VOR approach, there's a catch. Anytime the nav source is changed when the KAP 140 is engaged in NAV mode, the autopilot will automatically switch from NAV mode to ROL mode (wings level). If you load, say, an ILS approach the G1000 will automatically switch the navigation source from GPS to the VOR/LOC receiver prior to the final approach fix causing the KAP 140 to go into ROL mode. The only indication that the autopilot is no longer tracking a NAV source is the NAV annunciator on the KAP 140 will flash to prompt you to reselect NAV (or approach) mode. The ROL annunciation will display, too, but the autopilot's display is not really in the pilot's primary field of view and there is no aural warning to get your attention. If you don't manually select NAV mode again on the KAP 140, the autopilot will not track the newly selected nav source and you could find yourself flying off course in short order. The new Garmin autopilot may handle the change of nav source without a problem, but did I mention that it is not available on the Cessna 172? I think I did ...

Flying in a 'lectronic World

A good two-dimensional representation on a moving map can be a huge asset during ground operations. This is where the new G1000's SafeTaxi™ feature really shines by providing a highly detailed airport diagram with taxiway designations that I find much easier to use than the Avidyne taxiway diagram and approach chart displays. Here's the taxiway diagram for Concord, California that you get on the Avidyne. It takes a few button pushes to access, but it shows your position on the map, which I've circled in red.



The G1000's NACO chart display is comparable to the electronic charts provided on the Cirrus' Avidyne, but frankly they aren't terribly useful. They certainly aren't a substitute for paper charts. I'm told there is a Jeppesen chart display that is similar to the CMax product on Avidyne, but it isn't installed in any of the G1000 planes I fly and I can't find any documentation on how it is supposed to work.



At major airports, the G1000 offers a really cool moving map feature - just zoom in and you'll see a detailed airport layout. The brilliant part of the design is that it's easy to access - no extra button pushes, just reach over and twist the zoom knob (which I've circled in red). Your position is shown on the moving diagram (also circled in red).



To better grasp how useful this feature is, imagine this scene with really poor visibility and rain.



At smaller airports, you won't see much if you zoom in. Then again, at smaller airports, you're less likely to get lost.



I wish that the G1000 and the Avidyne systems provided a complete, electronic Airport/Facility Directory that contained information on traffic pattern altitudes, which runways are right traffic, the local noise abatement, and data on runway slope. That should be high on the list of desired features and it will probably be offered in the future, especially since aircraft owners will have to pay to download that information. Just what we needed - another database subscription!