Upgrading Avionics

ByHank Gibson

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.

Garmin GTN Series

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.

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  • Shock Cooling in a PA46

    ByJoe Casey

    We’ve all heard it said…”reduce the throttle by no more than 1-inch every minutes to ensure you don’t shock-cool your engine”. Does this advice apply to a PA46 engine? Can a PA46 engine (Lycoming 540 or Continental 520/550) really be shock-cooled? How should the engine temperature be managed?

    Metals expand and contract with temperature, and the various metals in an air-cooled aviation engine expand and contract at a different rates. Shock-cooling supposedly occurs when the engine changes temperature quickly and the different metals in the engine cool (and therefore change shape) at different rates. When the change occurs dramatically supposed scoring, rubbing, and marking of the metal can occur, which can cause catastrophic results.

    So, let’s back to the original question…can a PA46 engine suffer shock-cooling and should a pilot operate the engine so as to avoid shock cooling? Simply put, I’ve never seen nor heard of any piston PA46 engine suffer shock-cooling. In 5000+ hours flying the piston PA46 and 16 years of flying/managing/training in the Malibu/Mirage/Matrix, it simply has not happened to me nor anyone I know. Does it mean that it cannot happen or has never happened? No. But, it is certainly not a prolific threat to our fleet.

    Should the owner/pilot operate the engine with a cautious eye cast toward the potential of shock cooling? Well, sort of…but, let’s flesh this out. My suggestion is that a pilot should operate the engine with conservatism in movement of temperature, but only because this is a good operating practice with any machine, and any flying machine is (by definition) not “overbuilt”. And, there are many ways to change the temperature of the engine…not just by reducing power. Here’s a partial list of ways to cool your PA46 engine:

    • Reduce power: Obvious…yes. When the engine produces less power, less heat is generated. Reducing power in a piston engine will almost always result in less temperature.
    • Lower the nose: By descending (and leaving power in a cruise setting) the airspeed will increase and cool the engine.
    • Enrichen the mixture: Fuel has a cooling effect on the engine, so the richer the mixture the cooler the engine.
    • Lower the landing gear: Yes…you read that right…engine cooling will occur when you lower the landing gear because more air will flow over the cylinders. Notice the landing gear doors on the PA46 have air louvers. Air flows into the engine nacelle on the front, passes down through the cylinders (along with the oil cooler, intercoolers, and other components) and then out the louvers of the closed gear doors. When the landing gear is lowered the “back door is opened” and a LOT more airflows over the cylinders.

    My suggestion is that a pilot only perform ONE of these actions at a time when beginning a descent. This suggestion was presented to me by Chad Menne (Owner, Malibu Aerospace) some time ago and I’ve operated engines this way ever since. If you are at a higher altitude and simultaneously reduced the power, lowered the landing gear, started a big descent, and enrichened the mixture in one flail swoop, I think there’s a chance that your engine would suffer some negative effects that could be called “shock cooling”. So, when you do start a descent, pick one “cooling action” to accomplish at a time. I’m sure you’ll not hurt your engine.

    Simply put, shock cooling is not a huge factor in the PA46 community, and a PA46 pilot does not need to be overly cautious. The “one inch per minute” rule may apply in some other airframes, but in the PA46 world it is not applicable.

    Joe Casey’s aviation story began in 1990 with his first flight near Nacogdoches, TX in a Cessna 172. From lift-off, Joe knew he would have a lifetime passion flying just about anything that will leave the ground…He was completely hooked.

    Along with being an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE), Joe is an ATP/CFI-AHMG and Commercial Rotorcraft/Glider Pilot in the civilian world and also a UH-60/AH-64 Pilot-in-Command/Instructor/Examiner Pilot in the US Army Reserves.  His passion for the last 19 years, however, has been the PA-46 Malibu/Mirage/Matrix/Jetprop/Meridian. Has has amassed over 6,500 hours in various PA-46 airframes and believe it to be one of the finest flying machines available for the serious cross-country pilot with an eye for efficiency.

    Now, Joe has flown more than 12,200 hours in just about every imaginable environment. Whether providing initial/recurrent training in the PA-46’s, TBM’s, instructing in NVG’s in a UH-60 Blackhawk, flying the King Air series of airplanes, giving tailwheel endorsements, or taking kids flying for the first time, he simply loves flying machines and the people who fly them.

  • I Learn To Speak Seaplane

    ByHank Gibson

    From the time I started flying, I have always had the dream to learn how to fly a seaplane.  As I learned in November, it’s actually learning to land a seaplane, and the veterans call them floatplanes.

    ProMark Aviation at the Burnet Airport (KBMQ) offers a weekend float plane course that is high on fun and low on stress.  The school has a Piper PA12 Super Cruiser on amphibious floats (amphibs as I was corrected at one point.  I mean, if you’re going to fly a seaplane, er, floatplane, you have to know the lingo) that will land and takeoff on water, but does little else with ease and grace.  At 150 HP with those big floats and all the associated rigging hanging underneath the airplane, you are lucky to get to 500 feet before you get to your destination.

    We weren’t working on setting any speed records.  I was learning the lay of the water.  I learned about the step, the keel, pumping the floats, how to read the water, currents, ducks (yes, ducks and birds are important to know about when you are flying low on the water), buoys, docking, and ditching.  Step taxiing was fun as you are basically at 3/4 throttle screaming across the top of the water just below flying speed.  It’s the best way to taxi a seaplane (truly, it is.  You get more air in your engine, you can see better, and you are moving.  Just don’t try and turn sharp).

    Floatplanes also don’t have any shock absorbers, so the higher the wave, the more you get knocked around, so wind velocity and, in turn, wave height is very important.

    A very important nuance of an amphibious floatplane compared to a straight floatplane (one that doesn’t have wheels that come out of the floats), is at one point, you want to make sure your gear is down for landing (runway landing) and at another, you want to make absolutely sure your gear is up for landing (water landing).  If you land wheels down in the water, you will capsize, 100% of the time.  Thankfully from my good instruction, I did not capsize.

    Ken Wittekiend, my instructor, and I spent the majority of the weekend landing and taking off on Lake Buchanan (I was informed by locals it is pronounced “Buk-cannon”, not “Bue-cannon”), which is more open and therefore has more waves.  We did one landing on Inks Lake so my kids could see me land, which they thought was the best thing since cheese sticks.

    There is a check ride at the end of the training, but, as Ken reassured me, it’s the most fun check ride you’ll ever have.  I still hate check rides, but that one I think I hated least of all.

    I hope someday I can put my floatplane skills to practice, but for now, I can vouch that I now speak seaplane!

  • Angle of Attack (AOA)

    ByMike Hostage

    You are hand-flying an in-the-weather descent, power back, heading for the FAF. You start a 30 degree banked turn at your lead point to cross the FAF, when your passenger behind you gasps. Looking over your shoulder, you see he has spilled his drink into his lap…too bad for him! However, when you turn your head back to your panel, your inner ear tumbles and you see 45 degrees of bank, 15 degrees nose low, airspeed increasing.

    Congratulations! You have managed to get distracted and sucked into an unusual attitude recovery. By the book, you should roll wings level, pull to the horizon, and adjust power as necessary to keep the airspeed within limits. In this scenario, if you had not experienced vertigo, you might have been able to roll to less than 30 degrees of bank, recover your turn, pull the nose up to less than the original descent attitude, pulled a bit of power to slow back to your desired penetration speed and then resumed your desired ground track. However, this would only be appropriate if you had full situational awareness as to the deviations caused by the look over your shoulder, plus full confidence that the moderate corrective actions would put you back on your desired flight path.

    As a military aviator, I learned unusual attitude recoveries based upon hard maneuvering at extreme pitch and bank angles. In the hard-maneuvering environment, an unusual attitude could be 90 degrees straight up, airspeed decreasing below 120 kts…or 80 degrees nose low, 135 degrees of bank, airspeed increasing through 500 kts… etc. In these cases, understanding angle of attack, or AOA, is critical to maintaining controlled flight and returning to a normal attitude.

    In an extreme nose-high attitude, a military aviator is trained to roll the aircraft to 90 degrees of bank, ease off the back-stick pressure to reduce AOA, add power as required, and allow the nose to slice back towards level, rolling to wings level as the nose approaches the horizon. If nose low, the recovery procedure is to roll rapidly, within asymmetric g limits, until wings level, then to pull at optimum g loading to recover to level flight. For the nose-low recovery, power was normally reduced until airspeed could be assessed and brought under control. However, when doing the nose-low pullout at 7-9 gs, pulling the power for too long would leave you much to slow to resume combat.

    The AOA gauge on a fighter’s glare shield is a primary reference during hard maneuvering and for landing. The AOA for optimum maneuvering is 13 degrees, displayed as the green circle or “green donut” on the gauge. The red chevron on top represents a slow condition of 15 degrees or more and the yellow lower chevron represents 11 degrees or less.

    For normal landing in the F-16C, the pilot slows to 220 kts and configures abeam the touchdown point while mentally computing the final approach airspeed of 136 kts plus 4 additional knots for each 1000 lbs of fuel. When rolling off the perch and flying the final turn, the pilot would usually only glance once at the airspeed once to ensure final turn airspeed of 180 kts while using the AOA sight gauge as the primary indicator of a best performance turn. As long as the AOA was green donut (13 degrees) or less, you would not stall. If on speed and 13 degrees wasn’t going to get you around the turn to line up with the runway, you knew you were going to overshoot. You never wanted to see the red chevron of 15 degrees or more as that meant you were too slow, pulling too hard, and in danger of building an un-recoverable sink rate!

    Few GA aircraft are currently equipped with AOA indicators, though there are several after market devices available for retrofit. However, knowing the impact of AOA and how to manage it is vital to safe aviating, even without an AOA gauge. The bottom line is, as long as you don’t ask the wing to produce more angle of attack than it can handle, you won’t stall.

    Practicing final turn stalls, to know what the wing feels like as you get too slow or pull too much on the controls, increasing AOA past the critical point, will keep you safe when you encounter that unexpected overshooting wind or you find yourself inadvertently on too tight of a downwind leg. Better to overshoot or take it around to try again, than to pull too hard and exceed critical AOA.

    Mike Hostage is a retired USAF pilot with 37 years of experience, flying a wide variety of aircraft.  An instructor pilot for more than half of his 4800 flight hours, Mike is currently qualified in a Cirrus SR-22T and regularly flies his two homebuilt sailplanes.

  • Scud Running

    ByHank Gibson

    I was speaking with a pilot a few months back who was not instrument rated.  He was telling me of his flying experience while continually speaking fondly of scud running.  He told me several stories, most of the time with a smile on his face, about scud running to his destination while staying clear of clouds.  While he was talking, my mind was cycling through the numerous accident reports I’ve seen where a scud running VFR pilot has crashed into terrain or an obstacle.  Needless to say, scud running is not a very good idea.

    This pilot’s stories got me to thinking, how common is the practice of scud running amongst VFR only pilots?  As an instructor, I always teach my private students about personal minimums and making that no-go decision when clouds are below those personal minimums.  The act of scud running falls under several of those dangerous pilot mindsets, get-there-itis, invincibility, and macho-ism, to name a few.

    To bring everyone on the same page, let’s define scud running.  Wikipedia has a very good definition:

    Scud running is a practice in which pilots lower their altitude to avoid clouds or instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The goal of scud running is to stay clear of weather to continue flying with visual, rather than instrument, references. This practice is widely accepted to be dangerous, and has led to death in many cases from pilots flying into radio towers and high tension wires; however, even instrument-rated pilots sometimes elect to take the risk to avoid icing or embedded thunderstorms in cloud, or in situations where the minimum instrument altitudes are too high for their aircraft.

    To put some numbers with that definition, a scud running VFR pilot would takeoff with a 1200-1500 foot ceiling and stay 700-1000 feet above the ground, right in the area where towers, hills, and rapidly rising terrain reside.

    Scud Running

    How do we change this mindset?  Well, if someone has been scud running for years without incident, the practice becomes normal, like the pilot I mentioned above.  The mindset of invincibility sets in and the practice continues.  This particular pilot can also lead other pilots to adopt the same practice, encouraging them that nothing will happen to them, since we all know that our pilot peers know better than our flight instructors (insert heavy sarcasm here).

    In order to change this mindset, instructors need to emphasize personal minimums from day one.  This includes ceilings, visibility, and winds.  For a seasoned pilot, a review of accident statistics might help the process.

    Scud running is not a safe practice.  If you’re a scud runner, you need to rethink your attitude.  Is getting there really worth it?

    Still not convinced?  Read this pilot’s experience from AOPA.

  • Stephanie Mertz Joins Texas Top Aviation

    ByHank Gibson

    Texas Top Aviation has added a new member to our instructing team. Stephanie Mertz was hired in March 2019 and will be specializing in G1000 & Instrument instruction.

    Stephanie graduated from LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas with a degree in Aeronautical Science, earning her commercial single and multi ratings while there. She began her aviation career in Ontario, California flying a Pilatus PC-12 for charter and medical trips. While operating the PC-12, she gained valuable experience flying all over the US and Mexico.

    In 2013, Stephanie moved back to East Texas with her husband where she worked as a contract pilot flying a variety of Citations as well as a Falcon 10. A few years later, she became involved in her local Ninety-Nines chapter and joined their mentorship program.

    After earning her CFI, CFII, and MEI, Stephanie returned to her alma mater to pass on her flying passions to college students through flight instructing. After a year of teaching at LeTourneau, she and her husband, with their first baby in tow, moved to the Austin area. Now she is instructing with Texas Top Aviation while acting as a mentor for other women working on achieving their flying dreams.

  • The Diamond DA62: The Ultimate Twin

    ByHank Gibson

    Late last year, the Diamond Aircraft Corporation announced a brand new twin engine, the Diamond DA62. At first glance, this is a pretty cool airplane.  It seats 7 passengers, spread out amongst 3 rows, with 2 massive doors, leading to an “SUV” type feel, according to Flying Magazine.  That is only one of the “neato” features of the Diamond DA62.

    The thing that will make pilots believers is the fuel burn.  According to Flying Magazine, which did a test flight of the airplane, at 14,000 feet and 60% power, the airplane was only burning 12 GPH, but still doing 170 KTAS.  Remember, this is a twin.  That’s about the same as a normally aspirated Cirrus SR22 at the same altitude.

    Diamond DA62

    How does Diamond do it?  Jet A.  The company put two Austro AE330, 170 Horsepower, Jet A burning piston engines on the Diamond DA62.  You may say, well, yeah, at 60% power, that’s great, but I want to go places. How much fuel does it burn then?  Even at max continuous power of 95%, it’s still only burning 18.5 GPH total and cruising at 195 knots.  Paying Jet A prices, that’s pretty sweet.

    The range on the airplane is quite nice too.  Again, according to Flying Magazine, the range with full fuel (86.4 gallons with aux tanks) is about 1,300 miles.  You can carry the whole family too, as the full fuel payload is 1,000 pounds.  Golf clubs?  No problem.  Just stick them in the nose.

    The Diamond DA62 is probably one of the easiest twins to manage, engine-wise, too.  The Fully Automated Digital Engine Control (FADEC) system that Diamond installed leaves the pilot with only 2 power levers, instead of 6 on the typical piston twin.  All that needs to be done at cruise is set a percent power and the FADEC computer does the rest.

    Need air conditioning, built in oxygen, and TKS?  Diamond can set you up.  The G1000 system complete with digital backup instruments is standard in the airplane.  What more can you really ask for?

    If you haven’t figured it out, I really like this airplane and would be aching to fly it.  I enjoy the DA40 and have a good amount of DA42 experience, but I’d really like to hop in a Diamond DA62.

    Read the whole Flying Magazine article here.

    Sources:  Flyingmag.com

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