Lightspeed Zulu 2 vs. The Bose A20

Cirrus SR22 Owner Completes First Solo

ByHank Gibson July 31, 2014

Congratulations to Monte James who, on July 31, 2014, completed his first solo flight!  Monte is the owner of N565TV, a 2007 Turbonormalized Cirrus SR22.  N565TV is a G3 model with an Avidyne panel.  Monte was very excited to complete his solo flight.  He reported very good landings during the flight (he even said the last landing, which was probably his best yet, caused him to break into laughter!).  Texas Top Aviation’s Hank Gibson, Monte’s instructor, took pictures and continued the tradition of cutting Monte’s shirt tail to commemorate the flight.

Congratulations to Monte!

Direct to the FAF

ByHank Gibson December 9, 2017December 13, 2017

A common practice when ATC is setting an aircraft up for a visual approach is giving a clearance direct to the Final Approach Fix (FAF) for the approach for that runway.  The theory is, the pilot will fly to the FAF, then he’ll pick up the airport and fly visually in.  It is a handy way of setting the pilot up for a 5 mile straight in visual approach.

For anyone who flies with a Garmin GPS, whether is be a 430, a G1000, or a GTN 750, you have probably discovered a little nuance with going direct to the FAF.  Once an approach is loaded into the flight plan, whether is is loaded via vectors or via an IAF, all the waypoints on the approach go into the flight plan.  If the FAF is selected in the flight plan and the direct to command is given, the plane turns to the FAF and flies direct to it.

The fun starts once the plane gets to the FAF.  The Garmin doesn’t sequence to the next waypoint.  It just keeps the FAF as the active waypoint and the airplane just continues on the course it had to get to the FAF. This has probably caused some stress and frustration as the pilot is expecting the airplane to turn inbound (if the autopilot is engaged), but then it keeps flying, usually away from the runway.

How to fix this?  If a Garmin GPS is closely inspected once the direct to the FAF command is selected, the pilot will notice that the GPS goes into Suspend mode.  The Garmin programers thought this was a good idea to do.  

How to get it to sequence properly?  Well, once the FAF is the active waypoint and the airplane is flying direct to it, simply unsuspend the GPS, then the airplane will turn inbound on the final approach course and track inbound and the glide slope will pop up.  On the 430 or 530, just press the OBS key.  On the G1000, press SUSP.  On the GTN 750, tap UNSUSP on the bottom of the unit.

Hopefully, this will lead to reduced frustration on what otherwise should be a simple approach to an airport.

Reading Weather Prog Charts

ByHank Gibson January 27, 2015July 14, 2026

There are a multitude of weather products out there today to assist pilots in preparing for a flight.  Aviationweather.gov is the best source for getting all the information a pilot needs for planning a flight.  Aviationweather.gov is the National Weather Service’s source for all aviation related weather products.  When I teach about weather and weather briefings, I recommend to my students to utilize Aviationweather.gov in the planning stages, but still call the Flight Service Station to get a full fledged weather briefing before takeoff.

When preflight weather planning, one of the best ways to get a picture of what is happening over a broad area is utilizing the Low Level Significant Weather Prog charts.  The Prog chart gives a forecasted 12 and 24 hour picture of what type of weather to expect over the US.  The Prog chart gives the expected flight rules, areas of turbulence, and where the freezing level is located.  If you’re looking at the 4 panel view, the Surface Prog chart shows fronts, pressure areas, and areas of expected precipitation.  That covers just about everything, doesn’t it?

I believe the Prog charts are underutilized in planning.  Foreflight and Garmin Pilot have given easy access to radar pictures, satellite pictures, METARs, TAFs, and several other sources of weather information.  But, a lot of the easy access data you can get from those apps is current data (with the exception of the TAF) while a lot of the forecast data takes some hunting around.  So, products like Prog charts aren’t often utilized.

The other problem arises when pilots know about Prog charts, but don’t know how to read them, then don’t know how to find the legend to decipher the chart, the chart is often set aside and quickly forgotten about just because of a lack of knowledge.  Have no fear, though, as now we will use an example 4 panel Prog chart to decipher the lines and colorations.

Just looking at the Low Level Significant Weather Prog Chart above, it can be a little confusing.  That’s why they make a legend!

Coupling the legend with the chart above, we can determine some things.  First, California, parts of the Pacific Northwest, a small part of southern Arizona, and a good portion of the Midwest and East coast are going to have marginal VFR conditions in the next 12 hours.  Wisconsin, Illinois, a good portion of the Northeast, and a small portion of the Pacific Northwest will suffer IFR from IFR conditions.  There are going to be a good amount of low level turbulence in the northern and eastern parts of the country.  Finally, the freezing level starts at the surface running in a jagged line across the midwest states and curling up into the Northeast.

That’s a good bit of information, isn’t it?  If a pilot is planning a VFR flight into the Northeast tonight, it would probably be best to wait for another day, according to this chart.

Now, to see what is causing the conditions above, we need to look at the Surface Prog Chart.

The green circular areas above show that some form of precipitation is in that area.  The circular dots with the triangle located in Mexico and Baja California are depicting moderate rain showers.  If the triangle was gone, it would just be moderate rain.  In the northeast, all those symbols are showing moderate to heavy snow showers.  Across the plains, we see a lot of high pressure, meaning visibility and nice flying weather.

These charts are invaluable when it comes to flight planning, especially over long distances when the weather could be changing a lot over the period of your flight.  Put them to use the next time you are planning a trip and you’ll learn you have a much better picture of what the weather is doing.

Upgrading Avionics

ByHank Gibson October 6, 2014

There are many different ways to upgrade an instrument panel.  Putting in a 696 here, a JPI engine monitoring system there, even an Electronic HSI.  But, if you want to swing for the fences and get a serious upgrade, you have to go for a complete glass instrument panel.  For good measure, you might as well throw in a touch screen GPS while you are at it.

Which panel to go with?  There are two mainstream options (Garmin and Aspen) and a handful of other companies that make glass panel replacements (Avidyne being one, King for a short period of time at the end of the last decade being another with the KFD 840).  Around 2010, there were a lot of companies trying to get into the glass panel retrofit game, but many of the products didn’t gain a whole lot of popularity, leaving Garmin and Aspen at the top of the heap.

What about the touch screen GPS market?  Garmin has this pretty much cornered as well, with Avidyne and King just getting into the game.  The gap between Garmin’s GTN series and Avidyne and King is pretty wide.

The answer is pretty easy when it comes to the GPS (go with Garmin!), but not so easy when it comes to the panel.  The G500 and the Aspen Evolution series are both excellent interfaces with strong reliability, so which one do you go with?  Feature-wise, both have a lot of the same features: traffic, weather, terrain, synthetic vision, to name a few.  The presentation for each feature is a little different between the two interfaces.  It just depends on what you like better.

The nice thing about the Aspen system is you can go glass, but you have options on how much glass you want:  1 screen, 2 screens, or 3 screens?  With the single screen PFD, you have all your instrumentation, traffic, weather, and optional synthetic vision.  You don’t need the synthetic vision for the traffic and weather, as it shows up behind your HSI.  It is an honest to goodness glass panel retrofit.

When you decide to upgrade to 2 screens, this is where Aspen has a leg up.  The second screen is a completely redundant PFD and, if you get the 2 hour emergency backup battery installed, acts as the backup instrumentation to the main PFD.  This means you can take out the old steam gauge standby instruments.  This helps clean the panel up.

I personally don’t see the need for 3 screens, but maybe there is someone out there who needs it.

One selling point that Aspen has over Garmin is the wide variety of autopilots and GPS units that Aspen units are compatible with.  The G500 is only compatible with King autopilots, it’s own GFC 700 autopilot (which would be a retrofit), some Collins autopilots, and the Century 21, 31, 41, and 2000.  This does cover a wide array of autopilots, but it keeps some on the outside.  Aspen, on the other hand, is compatible with most autopilots on the market.

Finally, let’s talk price.  Going with an Aspen EFD 1000 PFD (this is the single screen Aspen) will run you somewhere in the area of $12,000.  The price will vary based on the shop and the airplane.  When you want to add a screen, it’s an additional $6,000.  This is for the base, so if you want to add weather or synthetic vision, it’ll run you a little more.

The Garmin G500 comes in around $20,000, again depending on the shop and the airplane.  The screens are bigger on the G500, which is kind of nice, and you are buying a Garmin product, which has a fabulous track record in the aviation industry.

Decisions, decisions.  There really is no wrong answer here.  Both are excellent products with very good track records.  Both have really nice features and don’t hardly fail.  Really, the choice comes down to what you want.

Need training on your upgraded GPS or glass panel retrofit?  Contact Texas Top Aviation for thorough training on your new avionics today.