Plastic Pilot

When I started my G1000 training, which comprised both theory and practice, the first question was “Are you current with the GNS430 ?”. Yes was definetly the answer. I had extensive training and knowledge of the 430, on which my instructor insited a lot.

The G1000 trainer then said that I would have trouble with the G1000. What a surprise, and a douche froide (cold shower). Later on, I understood it was true.

What I will write here after concerns only the flight planning part of the G1000 / GNS430, in terms of instruments they obviously have nothng in common.

The good Garmin philosophy is respected by the G1000, so you find the FPL, Direct, CLR, ENT, PROC buttons, and the MENU key. What is new is the series of “soft keys”. This is a series of keys below the screen, with no marking on them. Their function differs according to the currently used menu, and this function is indicated on the screen.

This is the big change you will have to deal with as a 430 user. Typically, when you finished to fill your flight plan in a 430, what will you do ?

Menu -> Activate ? Correct. But if you do so on a G1000, you won’t find an “activate” entry in the menu. So, what ? Look at the soft keys below the screen, and one of them is labelled “Activate”. That’s the big idea of softkeys: offer the most frequently used functions directly.

The same applies to the procedures. To select a departure, press the PROC button, then the softkeys will become “select dep”, “select arr”, and “select app”. So press “select dep”, then the list appears, and one of the soft keys become “activate”, so once you finished scrolling, press this softkey, and you’re done. No more use of the menu key except for advanced / less frequently used functions.

Not only you can gain time with the softkeys, but moreover the corresponding items DO NOT appear in the menus anymore, and that’s why my G1000 instructor was correct: in some aspects, being GNS430 proficient can be initially slowing you down when learning G1000.

More on G1000 NAV settings and engine performance in the next posts…

Apart from plastic body (still no news about the gelcoat problem…) and plastic engine, the bigger change recently is certainly the plastic instruments - a.k.a glass cockpits.

This change has been made in steps, from years now, but the revolution is now complete.

One of the first step was probably electronic HSI like sandel tubes, which presented HSI on a small CRT tube, with additional route information. In parallel, GPS coupled with databases like the famous GNS 430 / 530 familly did bring moving maps in our cockpits.

An other step was the introduction of “low cost” inertial devices, allowing to replace the good old mechanical gyros, providing electronical attitude information.

Mix all of that together, and you obtain a G1000. I won’t say a lot here on concurent product like Avidyne Entegra as I have no flying experience with them. However one must note one advantage of the G1000 over its competitors: it is the only one to integrate GPS and COM/NAV boxes. With Avidyne, it is still necessary to have separate GNSs.

So, when you fly a glass cockpit plane, the classical six instruments are all represented symbolically on the screen in front of you. And by represented, I don’t mean “replicated as the mechanical”. Typically, speed and and altitude indicators are in form of sliding tapes, not with round dials and needles.

My progression during the conversion to G1000 was in steps:

1) Get used to the HUGE attitude indicator that fills the whole screen
2) Find where information is
3) Sort out where the knobs are
4) Fly the bugs, not the figures

All of them will be detailled later, but here are a few words on each.

1) The vertical displacement corresponding to a given pitch change is much larger than on a classical horizon. This can be disturbing, when you’re used to move your horizon by a few millimeters, to move it by centimeters to establish climb attitude.

2) Any IFR pilot is used to the T layout. This no longer exists with G1000, and even if the reading of the Primary Flight Display (PFD) is logical and easy, some training is needed.

3) In an electromechanical cockpit, each knob is situated in the corresponding instrument, i.e. baro setting on the altimeter, HDG bug and CRS selector on the HSI. As information is on the screen of the G1000, the knobs are all grouped on the side. Finding the proper knob can not be based on the instrument location, and there is noting worse than turning the baro setting instead of the CRS selector (based on my own experience…)

4) Even when flying with classical instrument, what we look at is the position of the needle, in the geometrical sense, not the actual values. Typically, when maintaining an altitude in cruise, one just manage to keep the needle vertical. This seems obvious, or even silly, but when flying with a G1000, there is no such thing, but a vertical tape with a bug you can set. The equivalent of keeping the needle vertical is to keep the bug aligned. Trying to interpret the figures displayed beside the tape is just not possible, and will lead to serious delay in the scanning.

As mentionned eariler, I will develop all of these topics, but the first conclusion is that conversion to G1000, even for VFR only, requires both theoretical and practical training. This is not an easy transition.

SyS

When flying diesel engine, you have to trust the FADEC. In fact you have no other choice as it controls the engine.

This seems obvious, but if you’re used to the classical three levers (throttle, prop, mix), you will probably feel out of control, or out of the loop, on your first FADEC single lever flights. This impression comes from the way we fly variable pitch props, which has nothing to do with what the FADEC does, because it is so quick and attentive to engine only.

A quick résumé for pilots not used to variable pitch prop:
High RPM for take-off
Slight reduction in climb above safety altitude
RPM reduction in cruise, to have a better engine efficiency
High RPM again on short final, in case of go-arround

With a FADEC, you just select an engine load, in %, and the FADEC decides an engine power and the appropriate RPM. The following diagram is extracted from the DA40D AFM, and shows the relation between engine load and RPM.

This shows that RMP will be maximal at full load, and then decrease, which is quite usual, and then decreases when power is reduced.

But when power goes below 20%, the RMP increases again. For three lever pilot, this means that even at low power the regulator is active, and that moving from low power to no power won’t correspond to a prop slowing down !

This feeling is quite strange, and on some approaches in my first hours on diesel, I sometimes put some power back, just to be sure that the FADEC / engine couple was still working properly ! As you can imagine, the results was not exactly a stabilized approach ! I never had any bad surprises during an approach.

An other thing you can expect, is prop pitch change in turbulence, because the wind gusts in the prop will lead to RPM changes, and the FADEC will react to that immediately by adjusting RPM.

To summarize, you have no direct control over prop RPM, which can feel strange, but the gain is that you no longer have to monitor three parameters (MP, RPM, FF), but a single load, with a single lever, so pilot workload is reduced, which is good !