| 2005/11/12 Cessna 182 and G1000 avionics | |
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2005-11-12 23:34
by Merlin
in Flying, Nflying
Cessna 182 and G1000 avionics
   Saturday, I went for my second flight to practise in a Cessna 182 (bigger plane & more horsepower), and I picked up one with brand new Garmin 1000 avionics (aka glass cockpit), which is basically the fanciest instruments you can get in a small airplane nowadays. I started with a 2H class explaining the new avionics and giving demonstrations, and then got to sit in a cessna on the ground to play with all the buttons without having to worry about flying the plane. I did got about 45mn ground time with the avionics and buttons, plus the time in flight (2.8H). My take is that some interface things are still quite non intuitive on it, like some buttons from the left screen affecting the right (nav/com), but not all, and not consistently like switching the nav/com focus. All in all, the learning curve is fairly high and there is a clear risk of the pilot spending too much time looking at the screens instead of focussing on the rest of the flight. Also, the C182 had a separate auto pilot, which was mostly coupled but not quite, so each time you got atis, you had to reset the baro on
All in all, despite an experienced CFI (probably one of the ones with the most G1000 time at my club), some quirks were hard to figure out and quite distracting in flight. However, for the rest, I was impressed:
All in all, while the garmin folks still need some better UI/usability people, the G1000 is well designed inside and quite interesting to use. |