Barons also will benefit from yaw damper and approach capability when the autopilot is coupled with a compatible third-party IFR navigation unit, when equipped with SkyView HDX and autopilot combo.

“We’re excited to expand the SkyView HDX and Dynon’s autopilot approval into the Beechcraft Baron series,” said Michael Schofield, Dynon’s director of marketing.

As an add-on to the SkyView HDX system, pilots can add the three-axis autopilot starting at a list price of $11,192 for Barons, including all hardware and servo harnesses required for the installation. Pilots may also choose the SkyView autopilot control panel at $664, and the knob control panel at $335, for the ability to adjust the functions most often modified when using the autopilot, like altitude, heading, track, and altimeter setting.

READ MORE: Dyson Gets Autopilot Approval for Beechcraft Model 36

You can find and install Dynon Certified products—including this autopilot approval—at any Dynon authorized installation center. The company also indicated that additional autopilot approvals are in progress for certain Mooney M20s and Beechcraft Debonair 33s. Electric trim and autopilot auto-trim can also be installed on Dynon autopilot-equipped models.

Trim motor control and autopilot auto-trim can now be had for most of the Dynon Certified autopilot installations that have electric trim motors installed. Before, this feature was only found on a few select trim systems. The company has confirmed that the restrictions have been removed, so now auto-trim can be used in all Dynon autopilot-equipped Cessna 182s, Beechcraft 35s and 36s, Piper Senecas, and Beechcraft Baron 58s.

The post FAA Approval Granted for Dynon’s Certified SkyView HDX and Autopilot appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Here’s a short list of eight of the most important aviation technologies in the history of flying, and you might be surprised how early some of them were introduced. 

Radio Communications

There is no shortage of miracle technologies we pilots take for granted. I’d argue that near the top of the list should be in-flight radio communications. Most pilots think that radios have been around forever, and they’re not far from being right about that. You won’t find any photos of Orville sending reports to Wilbur from the Wright Flyer; it was just over a decade that the first successful air-to-ground radio call was made, when, in 1915, Captain J.M. Furnival picked up a transmission from the ground sent by a Major Prince (first name unknown), who radioed the message, “If you can hear me now, it will be the first time speech has ever been communicated to an aeroplane in flight.” It’s a little meta for our tastes—we prefer “Watson, come here, I need you.” But it was a start.

By the early 1930s, radios, which, like a few other aviation technologies, seemed to mature in lockstep with aviation’s progress, were small, light and reliable enough to have even in small planes. And around that time, the International Commission for Aerial Navigation had formed, in part to avoid a Babel-like world of communications, putting forth the first standards for aerial radio communications.

Where this technology led is familiar to nearly every pilot. Today, we can communicate air-to-ground, ground-to-air and air-to-air with ease, usually with excellent voice fidelity even from great distances. The benefits of this technology are too numerous and obvious for us to list here but, suffice it to say, it’s hard to image a modern world of aviation without pilots and controllers playing together.

Handheld Radios For Pilots

Instrument Landing System

The instrument landing system is a presumptuous, even boastful name. Even when it was introduced, it was hardly the first or the only system for helping an airplane find the airport in conditions of low visibility through the use of instruments. But just as no one complained when Muhammad Ali called himself “The Greatest,” because he so clearly was, the same was true for ILS. Whereas a VOR approach could get you within shouting distance of the final approach fix (with the help of a stopwatch, a guess at the winds and, if you were lucky, an intersecting radial), an ILS provided the whole shebang, with lateral and vertical guidance, and it did it with such precision that most ILSes got you down to 200 feet AGL. True, it required a lot of infrastructure, but it created a high-precision landing system at a time when the technologies that air navigation architects could leverage were rudimentary. They were essentially nav radio signals arrayed vertically (the glideslope) and laterally (the localizer component) with an instrument in the airplane to keep track of each. While flying an ILS takes practice and requires skills that don’t come naturally to many pilots—staying on the glideslope is as much an art as a science—it’s a self-contained system that makes the VOR approach look positively primitive.

Sure, precision RNAV approaches are better in a few important ways, but ILS was the undisputed champ of instrument flying for more than 50 years. And with it in wide use still, even for automatic landings, few expect it to go away any time soon.

GPS

The development by the United States Department of Defense of the Global Positioning System (GPS) was a watershed in area navigation, though it wasn’t the first such system. Before civil-use GPS came along in the late 1980s, there were already a few area navigation systems, though few ever made their way into the flight decks of small planes.

There are area navigation systems that calculate position based on the relative positions of radio navaids and DME—they were extremely accurate. Bendix-King’s KNS-80 navigation receiver was a modestly popular product and can still be found in the panel of some small planes, though, in our experience, they are seldom put to use.

There are also inertial systems that use sophisticated (and enormously expensive) combinations of gyroscopes and/or lasers or solid-state gyros along with magnetometers and other aids to calculate position based on rates of rotation. The science behind these various systems is complex, but their operation is fairly simple. And like sophisticated area nav units, inertial systems are very accurate. Moreover, they don’t rely on navaids or satellites to work. They are entirely self-contained. Not surprisingly, these kinds of systems were widely adopted by large commercial, military and private users.

Another system, Loran, developed during World War II, used very low-frequency radio waves bounced off the atmosphere. In its initial iteration, Loran was accurate to 100 meters or so, but in its later form, Loran-C, which came to the fore in the 1970s, it was accurate to tens of meters or better. And because the revolution in electronics enabled far cheaper, smaller and lighter receivers, Loran looked like the wave of the future. Instead, it was shut down around 25 years after it began to gain popularity with pilots of light planes.

The reason? The DoD’s Global Positioning System. GPS makes use of a known constellation of satellites to determine very precise points of location on the earth and in the atmosphere. As its name says, it really is a global system, too. When paired with a database, a GPS receiver can provide extremely accurate guidance from point to point. And when aided by additional ground and space-based systems to enhance accuracy, GPS receivers can provide pinpoint location capability, allowing approach courses with none of the angular uncertainty or radio infidelity that even ILS systems are liable to suffer.

While ubiquitous, GPS has its weaknesses. Because its signal is very low power, it can be jammed quite easily, and because it relies on satellites and associated systems, it is staggeringly expensive to field and maintain. But the impact it has had on aviation is unparalleled. And that impact pales in comparison to the beneficial impact it has had on our lives in thousands of other areas of life.

Moving Map Navigation

The idea of an electronic moving map that knows our precise position in the air and can keep track of and display an ever-changing picture of the world below is a fantasy that every pilot who ever struggled with folding paper charts entertained often. And when a few enabling technologies—GPS, low-cost displays and high-powered small processors—came along, the moving map was born. The moving map revolution, which is sometimes erroneously dismissed as an accessory to aviation, has been foundational to the advancement of situational awareness and the elimination of one of the deadliest types of crashes, controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), where an aircraft is flown by its crew into the ground by mistake. CFIT crashes are almost always catastrophic. With moving map, you get automatic situational awareness in four dimensions (time being the fourth), graphical and dynamic mapping of weather systems, airway and airport data, and so much more. Those who grew up with moving map applications are sometimes derided as “children of the magenta,” a phrase that refers to the magenta-colored course line on moving maps. I’d argue that proponents of moving maps’ benefits are merely taking advantage of far superior technologies to keep themselves and their passengers safe from situational awareness errors that were commonplace before moving maps came along. 

Today’s Electronic Flight Displays

Weather Intelligence

There is no shortage of things for pilots to be concerned about, and at or near the top of the list are a handful of serious weather phenomena. There’s inflight icing, fog, high winds, turbulence, mountain wave and garden-variety cloud obstruction, to name most of the biggies. But by far, the most hazardous weather phenomenon is convective activity, which most often manifests itself as thunderstorms, which can grow in size to otherworldly proportions and pack a punch so big it can take a small or not-so-small airplane apart.

The development of weather-gathering technologies has progressed steadily since before the advent of powered flight, but without much debate, the most significant has been the development of next-generation weather radar, which in the United States is known as NexRad. Introduced in 1988, NexRad is a powerful doppler radar that can sensitively detect storm shape, intensity, movement, convective activity and precipitation. The network of 160 radar sites in the United States provides a coast-to-coast system of weather surveillance. It is one of the crown jewels of U.S. technological achievement, providing life-saving early warnings of severe thunderstorms, tornados and hurricanes. The continued improvement of forecasting technologies and intelligence have provided aviation with tools today that were unimaginable 50 years ago, intelligence that saves billions of dollars and untold lives every year.

On top of that, aviation has enjoyed a revolution in in-cockpit weather information availability, with services like ADS-B’s TIS-B weather services and Sirius-XM’s up-to-the-minute weather information for pilots of everything from PA-28s to bizjets, allowing pilots to make solid mission-planning decisions based on real intelligence and not guesswork based on hours-old reports.

Autopilots

To many pilots, an autopilot is a dumb mechanical aid, something you can use to take a look at the chart without going off course or busting altitude. And they are that. But today’s digital autopilots are so much more, too.

Autopilots work on one common principle. The system uses navigation, heading and attitude inputs to activate servos to keep the plane going where the pilot has programmed it to go. In its simplest form, an autopilot keeps the wings level while ignoring all other parameters—this is more helpful than one might imagine; the loss-of-control chain in instrument conditions is typically begun by an uncommanded, steep bank, causing the plane to enter a spiral dive, building airspeed and making a recovery, especially when the plane is still in IMC, a dicey proposition.

Autopilots have inspired aviation dreamers to imagine what it might be able to do. Could it keep the plane on altitude, too? Tie it into the baro system, and of course it could. Could it follow a pre-programmed nav course? Yup. Just couple it to the nav receiver. Could it fly an approach? Ditto. Yup, that too. Keep the tail from wagging. Even that.

From there, engineers have gone to fantastic places. Today’s autopilots can work in the background, providing protection from surprise deviations in pitch, bank angle and airspeed, keeping the plane from getting either too slow or too fast. And several models today feature a single button the pilot can push to return the plane to straight and level flight in case of accidental loss of control (upset).

Autopilots have gone from being an expensive luxury to an indispensable tool for helping pilots keep the plane under control and assisting in flying very precise approaches, as well.

Plane & Pilot Snap Quiz: Autopilots

Active Noise-Canceling Headsets

The inclusion of headsets in a list of critical aviation technologies might seem off target, but it is not. Especially in small planes, which are almost universally too loud for our hearing health, a good noise-canceling headset is a critical pilot tool. 

Headsets have been around for a long time, and early models were heavy, clunky and not particularly effective. But they were better than nothing. A lot better. And because they early on incorporated earcup speakers and boom-mounted microphones, they helped ease communications difficulties, something pilots who never flew in the pre-headset days, when staticky ceiling-mounted speakers and handheld mics caused communications havoc on nearly every flight, are blissfully unaware of. 

New models, of course, feature electronic noise-canceling features, which work by sampling the exterior noise and creating an out-of-phase counterpart to it, effectively electronically canceling the exterior noise, at least a large part of it. 

Today, pilots take not good but excellent noise-canceling headsets for granted, but we all know the difference between the noise levels before we put them on and then after, when we don them and hit that switch to activate the sweet quiet that ingeniously designed electronics can bring. 

Plane Facts: Headsets

Traffic Avoidance

It’s rare for planes to run into each other in the vast skies above, but when they do, it’s almost always catastrophic. And it often inspires regulatory change. It was the 1956 collision between a Douglas DC-7 and a Lockheed Constellation over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 aboard the two planes, that launched the creation of a nationwide radar network and the Federal Aviation Administration. In subsequent years, mid-air collisions in the skies above Cerritos and San Diego, California, drove additional layers of regulation, including mandatory equipment installation for planes that fly in busy airspace. 

For most of these advancements, larger military and commercial aircraft were the first to get robust anti-collision technologies. But in this case, the adoption by the FAA of mandatory transponder equipage went from the bottom to the top of the aviation food chain. The Mode C transponders sent regular, individually identifiable signals to help controllers keep track of where planes were, so they could issue heading clearances to keep the potentially conflicting traffic targets from merging in the worst way.  

Later, the FAA mandated collision avoidance systems, TCAS and TCAS II, for airliners and other large planes, the latter taking emergency, last-ditch collision avoidance out of the hands of the controllers and issuing direct clearances to the two planes involved to keep them from colliding. In recent years, even smaller planes got collision-avoidance gear, including the early TCAD system from Ryan and, later, more capable active traffic systems from companies like Avidyne and Garmin.  

Finally, the introduction of mandatory ADS-B in 2020 gave controllers and pilots new tools to individually identify and route traffic to keep potential conflict to a minimum while using satellite tracking to provide extremely accurate, up-to-the-second position information, including altitude, to all involved. 

5 Barriers Aviation Innovators Busted

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Dynon got the good news earlier this week that it had earned FAA approval for its autopilot in the Beechcraft Model 36 series singles (36, A-36 and B-36 models) as part of its SkyView HDX avionics system. The certification, Dynon told Plane & Pilot, took longer than anticipated as a result of pandemic-related delays, so the approval is welcome news indeed, not only for Dynon but for its customers, too.

The affordable (starting at $4,175) autopilot comes with the needed hardware and servo harnesses. It can be optionally outfitted for three-axis operation, including yaw damper. Dynon’s autopilot can fly instrument approaches when coupled with a compatible IFR-certified navigator. Also available are autopilot control panels to complement the SkyView system.

Because Dynon had included the certification of its software update (version 16.0) with the autopilot certification, a common practice, the company was delayed in shipping some products to dealers and end users, as we reported earlier. The Beech 36 autopilot certification clears the way for Dynon to resume shipments of certificated products immediately, though production and deliveries of its systems for amateur-built aircraft remain impacted by supply chain issues. 

Dynon says that it’s busy at work on getting approvals for its autopilot in the Beechcraft Baron, the Mooney M20 series and the Cessna 182.

The post Dynon Gets Autopilot Approval For Beechcraft Model 36 appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Garmin has gotten approval to install its GFC 500 autopilot in some of the most popular light singles on the planet. The GFC 500 is a sophisticated digital retrofit autopilot available starting at around $7,000.

The autopilot is designed to integrate with the Garmin GI 275 or its G5 electronic flight instruments, and it can work and play with a combination of those instruments or the G500 TXi™ flight display or its popular G3X Touch flight display, so owners can tailor their solution to their panel and needs.  Part of the installation is the autopilot controller, which features dedicated keys and knobs along with a control wheel for setting the plane’s pitch, airspeed and vertical speed. There’s also Garmin’s Level button, which with a single push returns the flight to straight-and-level flight.

Its capabilities go well beyond traditional autopilots, with envelope protection features including that dedicated LVL button, underspeed and overspeed protection, and more, all part of Garmin’s Electronic Stability and Protection (ESP) suite, which works in the background even when the autopilot isn’t engaged to protect from loss of control under a variety of flight conditions.

For more about the GFC 500, check out Garmin’s video on the product.

Flying Garmin’s Low-Cost GFC 500 Autopilot

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Garmin announced earlier this week that it had earned FAA approval for the installation of its popular GFC 500 autopilot into four models of Piper aircraft. The approvals add to those already in the books for a number of popular Cherokee-branded planes. The latest batch of approvals are for the PA-28 201T and PA-28 236 models known as Dakota, among other monikers, and both major flavors of the iconic Cherokee Six, the 300 and 260 models.

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Introduced earlier this year, the GFC-500 is one of the new products from Garmin that adds great value to older airframes at an affordable price. A digital, two-axis autopilot with altitude hold, vertical speed and heading capabilities as well as available altitude pre-select and airspeed hold, approach coupling, and others, depending on the installed equipment, the GFC-500 is an extremely advanced unit. At the same time, because of its low price of $6,995 (or $10,000 with a G5 electronic flight instrument) it makes sense for many models of aircraft that before now had values too low for most owners to justify the purchase of an autopilot, let along an advanced one.

For more information on the GFC-500, visit Garmin’s website.

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Garmin has announced FAA approvals for the installation of its new lower-cost autopilots in some popular airplanes. The company’s GFC 500 got the okay for a host of Mooneys (Models J, K, M, R and S) and for the Beechcraft A36 Bonanza (models 36, A36 and A36TC). Its GFC 600 model autopilot aslo won FAA approval in the Cessna Caravan (models 208 and 208B). The GFC 500 sells for less than $10,000 and the GFC 600 goes for $31,995.

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We’d argue that the best safety bang for your buck is with an autopilot if you don’t have one or an upgraded one if yours is a bit long in the tooth.

Why is an autopilot a great choice for a safety upgrade? Over the past couple of decades, we’ve come a long way in understanding the nature of the risk we face when flying, especially when flying in instrument conditions, and the role that automation can play in that overall risk picture. We’ve also realized the importance of recognizing where a pilot’s performance might fall short and how we can make our flying safer by coming to terms with our inherent imperfection.

We’ve come to understand that the autopilot is a key component to flying safety. Not that you need an autopilot to be safe, but when the airplane you’re flying is equipped with an automatic flight control system and you know how to use it, your level of risk drops, especially for instrument flying and even more for new instrument pilots.

Today’s digital autopilots are remarkably accurate, reliable and capable. They achieve great accuracy because, instead of mechanical fast-spinning gyros, they make use of digital attitude sensors, which also account for their reliability. With no mechanical parts in the sensor system, modern digital autopilots are far less likely to fail than their predecessors. The capability part is due to the computer revolution and avionics manufacturers making use of small and inexpensive computer chips to mimic the abilities of the flight control systems in airliners, while adding some capabilities the airliners don’t have.

A few companies pioneered digital autopilots for small planes, including BendixKing, Genesys/S-TEC, Avidyne and Garmin. Garmin and Avidyne introduced autopilots that have safety features unheard of 25 years ago in light planes, including envelope protection to keep the plane from going outside the normal margins of flight (unless, that is, the pilot directly commands that maneuver.) And it does it even when the autopilot is turned off. The effect is an autopilot that helps prevent the most prevalent type of fatal accident in GA: loss of control.

But the new revolution isn’t as much about manufacturers introducing new capabilities to their systems as much as making the systems’ orders of magnitude less expensive while keeping the great capabilities they already have. Dynon, along with EAA, started the ball rolling about a year and a half ago when it got approval for owners of certain light planes to put the previously Experimental-only EFIS D10A right in the panel of their Skyhawks. Since that time, the ball has picked up speed, with Garmin introducing a pair of primary flight instruments, the G5 attitude indicator and G5 HSI, both of which were formerly for amateur-built planes.

Then, just a few months ago, a bevy of autopilot approvals came through, including blockbuster announcements by Garmin and Genesys of next-gen digital autopilots that will allow owners of even older, less-valuable planes to equip with high-quality digital auto-flight systems.

Today you can those autopilots to play along with display/control options that weren’t available when we wrote this. The Garmin GI-275 is the most noteworthy. An upgrade to the somewhat limited G5 display, the GI-275 does much more, including allowing you to control the autopilot through the display. There are also new flat-panel solutions for existing planes from Dynon and Garmin, though your autopilot choices depend on which display system you go with, so sure to make informed decisions when the time comes.

Here’s a roundup of the big recent announcements on the autopilot front:

Genesys S-TEC 3100

With new capabilities and a great price point, the new S-TEC autopilot leapfrogs its predecessors

Genesys announced in late July its new S-TEC 3100 digital autopilot. The 3100 will effectively take the place of the popular S-TEC 55X by costing slightly less while providing a great deal of capability, of which its legacy autopilots could only dream. S-TEC’s entry-level autopilots are extremely popular because they are rate-based units that use rate-of-turn instead of attitude to base their commands, compared with legacy autopilots for this class of plane. Those autopilots, available in hundreds of models of planes, were once the only economically feasible way for owners of light GA planes to put flight control systems in their planes.

The 3100 goes beyond those systems, providing far superior features and, presumably, performance (we plan to flight test the system as soon as possible) at a price point that will be competitive with its legacy products. The comparable product in S-TEC’s lineup is the 55X flight control computer. The popular rate-based autopilot was standard equipment in thousands of Cirrus SR22 and SR20 aircraft before Cirrus transitioned to the Garmin G1000-based panel several years ago.

The 3100 is an all-digital autopilot that boasts envelope protection and a straight and level button, as have become popular on Genesys’ competitors autopilots, as well as advanced autopilot features, including fully coupled approaches (both WAAS and radio-nav based), indicated airspeed and vertical speed hold, altitude hold and capture, course intercept and more. The company expects certification for the system in early 2018, with the first models slated for STCs including the Cessna 182, Cessna 210, Beechcraft Bonanza and Piper Saratoga.

Genesys plans to announce firm pricing on the autopilot soon, but it does say that it will be price competitive with Garmin’s recently announced top-tier GFC 600, which has a list price of between around $20,000 and $24,000 for the high-performance aircraft that Garmin is targeting with initial STC programs.

While the new S-TEC autopilot isn’t an existing Experimental product repurposed for the certificated world, arguably it wouldn’t exist save for the emergence of new autopilot options for pilots who have traditionally gone with S-TEC because it was the best-value option (often the only option) for owners of light planes whose hull value didn’t justify installing a more sophisticated model of autopilot.

Learn more at Genesys Aerosystems.

Dynon SkyView HDX

A flat panel with autopilot from Dynon for the former price of what it used to cost for just the autopilot

Dynon is in the process of certifying its SkyView HDX integrated instrument panel, which is in this roundup because the system comes with an integrated autopilot. First STCs are planned for the Cessna Skyhawk and Beechcraft Baron 58. The Dynon-certified equipment is the same as its SkyView HDX, which was designed for Experimental Category aircraft. The system includes dual displays, with a primary flight display with synthetic vision and angle-of-attack capability, a full functioned autopilot using Dynon servos, engine monitoring, moving map and flight management and a fully compliant ADS-B transponder. Dynon expects to make first customer deliveries by the end of the year. The company also said that it “expects to continuously expand the approved model list (AML)” to include a “broad range” of aircraft.

Dynon also announced its emerging plans to start a network of factory-run installation centers that will focus on installing SkyView HDX in certified airplanes. It’s looking at establishing the first center in the Seattle area.

The cost of the system is $16,000 plus a $2,000 STC fee. For IFR flight, the system does require a third-party IFR-certified WAAS GPS navigator, so the overall price for planes without an existing GPS-W receiver will be substantially higher than that for IFR operations.

Learn more at Dynon.

Garmin GFC 500 And GFC 600

Avionics giant’s new autopilots will break cost and capability barriers

With the announcement of its latest product for the used market, Garmin has done the seemingly impossible. It has once again changed the face of the retrofit avionics industry. The two new products, the GFC 500 and GFC 600, are intended for two separate classes of airplanes, the 500 for light low-to-mid performance singles and the 600 for high-performance singles and twins, including turbines. Both retrofit autopilots will have an impressive range of capabilities, including just about every feature of the popular GFC 700, including altitude hold and capture, indicated airspeed hold and vertical speed hold, plus nav and heading tracking. In addition, they will feature ESP envelope protection functions, which protect the plane from a variety of potentially unsafe flight scenarios, including overbanking, overspeed and underspeed protection, along with having Garmin’s Straight and Level button, which the pilot can push to return to a straight and level attitude to avoid an emerging loss of control.

The autopilots will come with their own servos, which are different for the two products and which is one of the chief differentiators between them. Both servo types are brushless DC units, but the 600’s are hardened for an extra margin of safety in harsher environmental conditions, such as might be encountered at very high altitudes or in icing conditions. The 600 can also integrate with a wide variety of existing panel-mount equipment, including the Garmin G500/G600 displays, as well as equipment from other manufacturers, so that, in theory, owners of many planes with an already-well-equipped panel will be able to add the Garmin autopilot without having to change the rest of the panel.

While the GFC 600 autopilot is designed to TSO standards as a stand-alone unit, the GFC 500 is based on Garmin’s G3X autopilot, popular among homebuilders. The unit will interface with a Garmin G5 electronic flight display and will feature a dedicated autopilot controller with Garmin’s familiar control wheel for setting airspeed and vertical speed values.

Cost of the GFC 500 when paired with an existing G5 flight instrument is just $6,995, and it can be purchased with a G5 primary display as a set for around $10,000. Garmin expects initial certification for the GFC 500 later this year in the Cessna 172, with certifications for the Cessna 182 and Piper PA-28 models to follow early next year.

The GFC 600 will sell for $19,995 for the A36 Bonanza and $23,995 for the Beechcraft Baron, two models for which Garmin has already earned STC approvals.

Learn more at Garmin.

TruTrak Vizion

An autopilot that breaks new ground on price

While it won’t come with all the bells and whistles of its Experimental-to-certified competitors, the TruTrak Vizion is priced at a point lower than anybody in the market, which could make the autopilot a real option even for owners of older Part 23 planes that until now were not good candidates for an autopilot retrofit.

The Vizion is a 2-axis autopilot that is capable of connecting with both handheld and panel-mounted GPS units. It also has an emergency level feature. Though not yet authorized, the system is capable of performing coupled instrument approaches, an approval TruTrak is pursuing. The Vizion comes in three models—standard, 3-inch and flat pack, all for the same price of $5,000. The EAA STC is on sale to members for $100. TruTrak estimates an average install time of just 18 hours, so install costs should be reasonable, too.

And it’s available now. EAA subsidiary EAA STC, LLC has begun selling STCs for TruTrak’s Vizion autopilot. TruTrak got Parts Manufacturer Approval (PMA) from the FAA for installation of the Vizion in select Part 23 aircraft this past spring.

At the moment, the Vizion is available for Cessna 172 models F through S. EAA and TruTrak are working to expand that list in the near future. Next in line are additional 172 models and the Cessna 177. For interested owners of other types of aircraft, TruTrak has an online signup form to help them decide where to take the autopilot next.

Learn more at TruTrak.

Want to read more about building and modifying aircraft? Check out our Modifications Archive.

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We familiarly call them “George” or “Otto.” But Avidyne’s DFC90 autopilot makes a strong case for being called “Doctor” George or “Professor” Otto. The attitude-based digital autopilot represents the missing hardware link in the integrated avionics suite Avidyne has been building for 15 years. It delivers a dramatic increase in performance and safety for Cirrus pilots flying legacy Entegra panels using STEC 55X autopilots, which the DFC90 is designed to replace via retrofit. Even more impressive are the future capabilities this first Avidyne autopilot promises pilots who fly current (R9) and future Entegra flight decks.

“We’ve put in all kinds of building blocks within the DFC90,” said Avidyne engineer and VP of Product Management Steve Jacobson—AviJake to his Twitter followers. “It’s a platform that can go much farther than what it does now.”

Not that its performance at the moment was anything to sniff at. We were under the control of a DFC90 in an SR22, N834LA, at 5,500 feet over New York’s lower Hudson Valley, where the Professor had brought us after being handed command shortly after departure from Westchester County Airport (KHPN), climbing us to altitude at a preset airspeed (125 knots) on an NNE heading.

Entegra PFDs (primary flight displays) have had AHRS (attitude and heading reference systems) capable of driving an autopilot since early in the decade, but the rate-based STEC took its commands from an electric vacuum-driven turn coordinator. It’s a given that a digital attitude-based system is much more precise and reliable than a mechanical system, and the DFC90 has a clear advantage in function-by-function comparison. (One telling data point: Max course intercept angle is 179.9 degrees—easily handled in a high-speed descent with flaps thrown in at the upper limits of the green arc without squirming.) But the real difference is in everything else the DFC90 does, which includes “Envelope Protection” to prevent stalls and overspeeds, and a potent “Straight and Level” panic button.

he Avidyne DFC90 autopilot features Overspeed and Underspeed protection (top), as well as a Straight and Level button (above).

The STEC 55X was never accused of being an intuitive system, but the DFC90, as a retrofit product, has retained the STEC’s look and feel. “Habit patterns are powerful, and we decided not to mess with the UI [user interface],” Jacobson explained.

Data fields on the PFD and value inputs are controlled primarily from the autopilot head. Lighting on the head and PFD indicate whether a function is armed (blue) or engaged (green). On-screen annunciations alert pilots to changes in the autopilot state.

New features unavailable in the 55X include the “Pitch and Roll” mode, which holds the aircraft in the attitude of the moment of engagement; vertical speed hold, for constant-speed climbs and descents and synched altimeter setting, which brings the aircraft to the proper altitude whenever the barometric pressure is reset. Jacobson demoed another use for the autopilot’s ability to hold a specific airspeed when we reached altitude: He dialed in 88 knots and armed the IAS (indicated airspeed) mode. “That’s the engine-out glide speed,” he said. “If I lose the engine, I hit the IAS button and let the airplane handle the energy while I look for a place to go.”

But an autopilot, like fire, can get out of hand if not properly monitored, and the DFC90’s Envelope Protection—comprised of Overspeed and Underspeed protection—minimizes chances of the autopilot contributing to an accident. We simulated both sides of the envelope, first putting the airplane into a climbing turn, engaging the pitch and roll mode, and then pulling back the power, imagining our attention were elsewhere. As airspeed bled toward 80 knots, the system issued aural and on-screen alerts. At 82 knots the autopilot leveled the wings, and then lowered the nose to maintain airspeed. When we applied sufficient power, it resumed the climbing turn. We repeated the exercise with a descending high-speed turn. As the airspeed closed in on 200 knots, aural and visual alerts warned of the potential overspeed situation developing; when no outside corrective action was applied, at 201 knots the DFC90 reduced pitch down to keep the airspeed from increasing.

Avidyne’s exhaustive study of Cirrus accident data found almost one-quarter of all mishaps involved overspeed or underspeed conditions, situations Envelope Protection can help prevent. (Envelope Protection in the DFC90 is active whenever the autopilot is engaged; in future iterations it may be active at all times.)

The Straight and Level (S&L) button in the center of the DFC90 is another potential lifesaver. This is hardly the first autopilot with a panic button that promises to recover an aircraft from an unusual attitude, but Dr. George is unusually robust. The user guide calls for maximum engagement limits of 60 degrees of bank and 30 degrees +/- of pitch, but the S&L button reportedly has been demonstrated to work when engaged in an inverted Cirrus. When S&L is engaged, the autopilot commands an unloaded roll and a 2.5 G pitch-up recovery.

The ideal demonstration of the DFC90’s rock-solid approach mode would be a WAAS approach in a bucking crosswind. Where the 55X is known for fishtailing its way to the runway on final, the DFC90 flies the airplane like it’s on a rail. But this was a fairly calm day and the panel wasn’t WAAS-enabled. The ILS 6 approach at Poughkeepsie (KPOU) nonetheless showed the autopilot’s deadeye aim. We looked straight down the runway from the moment the autopilot intercepted the final approach course more than six miles out, and other than getting larger, the target barely moved.

The Flight Director (FD) mode, which can be a struggle to use in the 55X owing to a jumpy command bar, is stable and functional in the 90. We hand-flew using the FD on our way back to HPN, and it made keeping the aircraft in the correct attitude for the desired flight path easy.

“Avidyne’s finally in the flight control world,” Jacobson summed up after the flight. “The DFC90 and 100 are core to our business. They really flesh out the whole Avidyne product offering and make us a real player.”

The next step in Avidyne’s autopilot evolution is certification of the DFC100 for Entegra R9 panels, both as a retrofit and in new installations. The R9 uses Avidyne’s own FMS, rather than the Garmin 430s that have driven all earlier Entegra releases. The all-Avidyne architecture will give the DFC100 better and more powerful capabilities, including VNAV, enabling it to fly vertical, as well as lateral approach segments. Going forward, synthetic vision will be added to the Entegra mix, along with as yet unannounced capabilities that Jacobson promises will be a “game changer.”

Meanwhile, more than 250 DFC90s ($9,995) have already been sold into a fleet with several thousand upgradable Entegras. The retrofit requires an Entegra R8 system; earlier releases can be updated to R8 with a PFD hardware and software upgrade (about $3,000), easily accomplished by an authorized dealer in a couple of hours. (Avidyne has offered discounts for combo Entegra/DFC90 retrofits.) The autopilot swap itself is a slide-out/slide-in replacement, which takes “four minutes with a slow turning wrench,” Jacobson said. “The idea is to have a drive-by replacement—the guy flies in, borrows the crew car, goes get lunch, comes back, and the plane is ready.”

For legacy Entegra flyers looking for a giant leap forward in performance and safety from their Cirruses, the DFC90 is just what the doctor ordered.

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