Cirrus Tow Bar For Sale
In the market for a tow-bar? This one is basically brand new and hasn’t been used all that much. It has the Cirrus connections on it as well.
For more information, contact Texas Top Aviation.
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The Flight Director as a Backup
I’ve noticed that a lot of general aviation pilots tend to ignore the flight director on the attitude indicator. A lot of pilots don’t even know what it’s there for or how to use it. Talk to any airline pilot, though, and he or she will tell you how important the flight director actually is.
In most high performance airplanes, the flight director comes on when the autopilot comes on. Essentially, the autopilot is following the flight director, which tells the autopilot where to go. The flight director can also be used with the autopilot off, when hand flying an approach, for example. By turning the flight director on, it will show you where you need to fly to stay on course and on glide slope.
The flight director is most often controlled by the autopilot controller. The same buttons you use to put the autopilot in heading mode also tells the flight director to follow the heading bug when the autopilot is off. When you move the heading bug (or change course on the GPS, depending on which mode you have selected), the flight director will show you when you need to turn and when you need to stop turning. It directs your flight attitude, hence the name.
I recently discovered it’s a great backup when you have some instruments on the fritz. I went on a long flight in a steam gauge Piper Malibu and the attitude indicator started reading erratically. While flying straight and level, it would randomly indicate that I was in a 10 degree bank to the right, swing back and show wings level, then show a 3 degree turn left. This went on for a while. We were in VMC conditions, so legality wasn’t a problem, but it was kind of disorienting.
After a little while of this, the autopilot started acting up. It would start oscillating the pitch up and down, making it seem like we were going through a moguls course in the air. I ended up turning the autopilot off and hand flying the airplane.
This led to a conundrum, since my attitude indicator was unreliable. I could definitely look outside, since it was VMC, seeing when I was level and when I wasn’t. That would create a higher workload for me, which on a long flight like I was on, would lead to an increase in fatigue. The solution? The flight director!
I turned the autopilot off, but I left the flight director up. It wasn’t referencing the bank angle that the attitude indicator was showing since the KFC 150 goes off of the turn coordinator. So, if I just followed the attitude indicator, I could just keep scanning the instruments and relieve a little bit of my workload.
It actually worked really well. By just following the flight director, I was able to stay on course and on altitude with only minor attitude adjustments whenever we hit turbulence.
So, if you’re attitude indicator and autopilot decide to stop working on you, then bring up the flight director, push the same buttons you would if you were using the autopilot, and it works as a great backup.
AOPA Air Safety Institute: More Difficult Decisions
The AOPA Air Safety Institute is making it’s annual loop through Texas this January. The topic for this Safety Seminar is “More Difficult Decisions: Choices & Consequences.”
The seminar is geared our the decision making process that we as pilots face on each flight. Some decisions are easy (what altitude should I pick?) while some have much greater consequences and should be taken very seriously.
This event will be interactive for the participants as several scenarios will be presented. The goal is to help pilots learn to think through each decision, weighing the consequences along the weigh to arrive at the safest outcome of the flight.
The first area seminar will be held on Tuesday, January 21st at the Stinson Field Airport (KSSF, 8535 Mission Road, San Antonio, TX 78214). The second area seminar will be held on Wednesday, January 22nd at the TXDOT office in Austin (200 E. Riverside Dr., Austin, TX 78704). WINGs credit is available for all attendees.
Learn more here.
Simplified Instrument Approach Briefing
In instrument flying, I am all about keeping things simple. There is a ton of detail that an instrument pilot can get bogged down in. When an instrument pilot gets bogged down, he gets distracted from flying the airplane. When he gets distracted from flying the airplane, dangerous circumstances can happen.
I like to keep things simple. When I first started instructing, I developed a very simple instrument approach briefing that captures everything that is necessary on an approach plate, but prevents getting bogged down in the details.
I call it the BBC instrument approach briefing. Here it is:
Brief
First things first. The first step of an instrument approach briefing is to brief the approach plate. There are a bunch of acronyms out there that instructors tell their students to memorize that only cause confusion instead of helping get the plate briefed. To keep it simple, just work your way across the plate and you’ll get all the information you need.Start in the top left hand corner of the plate, with the approach course, then work your way right and down, as follows:
- Approach Course (or Nav frequency if flying a VOR/ILS/LOC)
- Runway information
- Notes (these are good to brief the night before as a lot are irrelevant to GA pilots
- Missed approach
- Frequencies
- Planview and MSA
- Profile View and Minimums
Simple enough, right?
Build
Now that you know what you are planning on doing, you can now take the second step in the instrument approach briefing and build the approach in your GPS. You know your approach type, you know your transition, and you know what your minimums are. Taking all that information, you can now build it in to your system.
Checklists
Once everything else is done, don’t forget the checklists. The descent and before landing checklists still need to be done as part of an approach. The best time to do these is before joining the approach so that you don’t have to worry about flying the approach and looking at a checklist at the same time. Even better, memorize the checklist and you don’t have to look at anything!
Most importantly, you want to be configured properly for the approach by the final approach fix. Gear, flaps set, power set, so all you have to worry about at that point is following the needles and trusting your instruments.
BendixKing Throws It’s Hat in the Glass Panel Ring
Two pilots walk into an FBO. “Nice airplane,” Pilot 1 says to Pilot 2. “What kind of panel do you have in it?”
“I just went all glass,” Pilot 2 says. “Put in the Garmin G500 TXi, a GTN 750, and upgraded to the GFC 600 Autopilot. Even put in the Mid-Continent standby instruments. It’s a pretty sweet set up. What about you?”
“Wow, sounds like it!” Pilot 1 responds. “I went a different route. I liked all my old BendixKing instruments, so I stuck with the company. I put in a BendixKing AeroVue Touch panel, a BendixKing KSN 770 touch screen GPS, kept my KFC 225 autopilot, got the ADS-B out compliant BendixKing KT 74 transponder, and finished it off with a King AeroFlight KI 300 Digital Backup instrument.”
Wait, what? BendixKing?
Yes, my friends, BendixKing is still around.
We are all used to the latest and greatest Garmin products these days. Don’t get me wrong, Garmin and Aspen make great retro-fit products for your instrument panel, while Garmin and Avidyne are at the top of the touch-screen GPS market, but don’t forget about BendixKing. They are staying in the game too.
BendixKing announced in April the xVue Touch for experimental aircraft, with the STC for the AeroVue Touch for certified aircraft coming later this summer. The xVue and AeroVue touch are pretty nifty units, comparable in features to what Garmin is doing with the G500 TXi and G600 TXi. It will be difficult to claw back into a competitive market share with Garmin, but BendixKing might find a niche market of followers.
Let’s take a look at the unit.
BendixKing AeroVue Touch
Now, I have not used the BendixKing AeroVue Touch or the xVue Touch, only read about them. But, what I’ve read sounds pretty cool. The display has really good resolution (BendixKing brags it is the highest screen resolution available), synthetic vision that comes standard (Garmin & Aspen charge extra for synthetic vision), plus VFR Sectional Charts & IFR High and Low Enroute charts, making paper charts even more obsolete.
The display is 10.1 inches and can be easily swapped between a full screen instrument mode or a split screen setup as seen above. Apparently, BendixKing has 3-D moving maps available on the AeroVue Touch too, which is standard.
The one thing Garmin has on the BendixKing AeroVue Touch right now is engine information. The G500TXi has a full complement of engine gauges available; the AeroVue Touch doesn’t, yet. BendixKing says it’s in the works, as well as radio information and autopilot control. I’m assuming the future autopilot control software would mean you could remotely mount an autopilot controller and input all functions from the AeroVue Touch display. The nice thing about these future upgrades is all the software updates are free through BendixKing.
The sticker price for the forthcoming unit is going to be about $12,600. Garmin’s 10.5 inch G500 TXi is $16,000, while Aspen doesn’t offer anything quite that big.
BendixKing KSN 770
I’ve been keeping my eye on the BendixKing KSN 770 Touchscreen WAAS GPS for a few years now. It never really has caught on quite like the Garmin GTN 750 or the Avidyne IFD 540. BendixKing took the same route that Avidyne did in creating a hybrid touch GPS (or mini-MFD if you want to look at it that way) where a pilot can perform functions either using the touch screen or utilizing soft keys on the edges. I like the hybrid touch approach as I have been bounced around in turbulence while trying to tap something into a Garmin GTN 750 and it can prove difficult.
Similar to the AeroVue Touch, BendixKing utilized split screen technology in the KSN 770. It’s a full WAAS unit that is already certified. It’s sticker price is $14,200, compared to the Garmin GTN 750 at $17,200 and the Avidyne IFD 540 at $15,000.
Other BendixKing Gadgets
Here are some other BendixKing Gadgets both available now and in the works:
- AeroFlight KI 300-BendixKing’s Digital Standby Attitude Indicator
- KT 74 ADS-B Out Transponder-Slide in replacement for vintage King transponders
- KFC 230 AeroCruz Touchscreen Digital Autopilot-2 or 3 axis options. Will be the only touchscreen digital autopilot available on the market. Also able to utilize the servos from older KFC autopilots. Should be available late fall or winter ’18.
Spring Cirrus Austin, TX Get Together (CATGT)
The South Central Cirrus Owner’s and Pilot’s Association (COPA) Region is hosting it’s second Fly In dinner at the Austin Executive Airport (KEDC) on Friday, October 8th, dubbed the Spring Cirrus Austin, TX Get Together. The event is from 5:30-9pm.
Like the first CATGT in October, there will be dinner ($25 per person), drinks, and several presentations. Jack Long and Josh Marvil will speak about their trip around the world in a PC-12. Ed McCombs and Eric Opiela will give a safety presentation about automation and task saturation.
Plus, best of all, Cirrus is bringing a real live flying SF50 Vision Jet, plus a brand new SR22 G6 with the Garmin Perspective NXi panel.
Fly in or drive to EDC. The dinner will be in the Henrickson Jet Center’s main hangar. You will need to RSVP so event organizers can get a proper head count. The link to RSVP is here.
Register for the CATGT before the slots are all filled up!
Cirrus G2 Vision Jet
Well, that was fast.
In January, Cirrus announced the Generation 2 SF50 Vision Jet. After getting the Generation 1 Vision Jet certified in late 2016, Cirrus didn’t waste any time in starting in on improvements.
The improvements are pretty sweet, making the G2 Vision Jet even easier to fly and step into for Cirrus’ target market, SR22 owners.
Here are the improvements on the G2 Vision Jet.
RVSM Approval
The G2 Vision Jet has received RVSM approval, allowing the airplane to fly at 31,000 feet. RVSM stands for Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums (read more about RVSM here). RVSM airspace starts at 28,000 feet, the G1 Vision Jet’s ceiling. Now that the G2 Vision Jet is RVSM certified, it can fly at 31,000 feet.
For piston pilots, you are left scratching your head as to the advantage of this. In a jet, the higher you go, the thinner the air, so the faster you go, and the less fuel you burn since the thin air needs less fuel to mix with. This caps out at a certain altitude and the speed begins dropping and you start losing efficiency (even though the fuel burn is quite low).
According to Cirrus, at 31,000 feet, the G2 Vision Jet cruises over 300 KTAS and gets a range boost to almost 1,200 nm.
Garmin Perspective Touch+
Cirrus & Garmin have taken the new NXi interface and paired it with the Garmin Perspective Touch to create the Touch+. You can read about the improvements on the NXi here, all of which are included in the Touch+ in the G2 Vision Jet.
The big improvement that is included in the Touch+ is Autothrottle capability. An Autothrottle is integrated with the autopilot. It automatically adjusts power settings and speeds based on the phase of flight without the pilot having to touch the throttle. Pretty cool.
New Cabin
The G2 Vision Jet has a redesigned cabin as well, making it an extremely passenger friendly airplane. The second row has been redesigned and equipped with a center console. There is also a drop down TV screen that allows passengers to connect their mobile devices to it to watch movies or videos while traveling (no internet on board, yet. That’ll probably be the G3 Vision Jet!).
Cirrus also put in more noise reduction in the cabin, creating a quieter ride for passengers. Cirrus also allows for multiple different seating configurations, depending on the needs of the owner.
As always, Cirrus is on the leading edge of airplane technology, creating airplanes that are easy as well as fun to fly. I’m excited to see how they continue to improve the design to both the SR22 and the Vision Jet.
