The difference in stall speed between my Ovation and an SR22 is one knot. So, I'm not buying it as a "vs other single engine aircraft" thing.
The introduction of the blue LVL button took care of #3 for the most part. The Garmin Autoland has/will take care of #5. The other three, I don't think you can safely recover from without a chute.
That's where I'd love to have one. I'm very hesitant to fly my plane over unfriendly terrain, at night, or above widespread low imc. I want to have a chance to find an open field when the engine quits. Flying over the Appalachians last week, I planned my routes to follow highways and keep a landing option within glide range. With a second engine or a chute I'd be much more willing to accept the second two risks. High terrain is still an issue for either solution (single engine ceiling for a twin and difficulty of rescue for the cirrus), but the chute would be far more survivable if forest was the only option. Plus, they still glide just fine, so you could almost certainly get to a road that you couldn't land on, but could be rescued on, before popping the chute.
It’s honestly pretty surprising to me that it’s still legal to fly over a congested area (think the LA basin, Manhattan, or most other large cities) without either a twin or or airframe parachute. Transiting those urban hellscapes offers no practical emergency landing options, and what few airports are there are increasingly being swallowed up by development.
What sort of emergencies did you have? Completely understand the appeal of the speed and the appeal of chute (even have flirted with the 22T myself), but for crappy IFR, nothing rides like a 210. Cirrus is pretty nice, must admit, especially for point-to-point traveling. But nothing beats two or three people and all their stuff out of a short grass field like a 210. Maybe a 206 I guess, but there goes what little speed the 210 has...
?? Is it also pretty surprising to you that it's still legal to drive a car? Those kill far more people on the ground and cause way more property damage than single-engine aircraft.
No, I don't think so. The DA40 community has been begging for GFC500 support for quite some time and so far no dice. Also, how do you plan on upgrading from a G1000 to a G3X? (I know, trick question). But so what are you going to do with a 20+ year old G1000?
Yeah, and that kinda sucks. But Garmin is a business, and they need to have a reasonable expectation of ROI to invest in such things. It appears that they're looking to add the C170B, C172 (with no letter, the first year or two of production), and C175 next. I don't know if that represents more airplanes in the fleet than the DA40, but at least Garmin is getting down to smaller fleets. Hopefully they'll get to the early DA40s eventually... But I don't know how small they'll go.
I do believe Diamond has been a bit stingy about sharing engineering information with potential STC developers, but that's not unheard of nor is it unwarranted in today's world. That doesn't necessarily stop someone from developing an STC.
In some ways, yes. It's definitely going to be harder to upgrade and even maintain far in the future. It's also exceedingly expensive to do the limited upgrades you can do now - The WAAS upgrade (which does give you new computers) is well north of $25K. And as I understand it, you can do that first and *then* you can upgrade to the NXi. $$$$$. I know it's done fairly routinely in turbine aircraft, but it's pretty cost-prohibitive in pistons.
Nope. It *can be* a trainer. It's fixed gear and 180hp, though most of them have constant speed props.
The one positive item behind the G1000 is that support won't be dropped for that line anytime soon. When several OEMs went with a factory G1000 cockpit, Garmin had to agree to not sunset its support. And given one of those OEMs now offers a G1000 upgrade to the earlier legacy analog cockpits within that model, my take is the G1000 support will last for decades.
Although continuing support at some point can mean replacing everything at high dollar cost. Electronics from 2005 are long in the tooth and some things will simply not exist at some point, much like the 430/530 screens.
Agreed. But it is STILL a G1000. Not a huge fan compared to say a G3X or G500Txi etc.
Neighborhood discount.
Just a point of reference, the TWO schools that had DA40s, sold them. Why? Not cheap to maintain as you think. Because rough landings hurt a lot harder in a DA40 than 172.
No argument there. The 430/530 and by extension the G1000 interfaces were clearly programmed by SW engineers who did not fly. Ply upon ply of hierarchical menus. The 650/750/xx5 navigators and G3X were designed by pilots (and the lessons from the 430 in actual use). I'll take a 750 driving a GI-275 over a G1000 any day.
Adding either of those requirements would be really hard on the helicopter operators.
Except I'm talking about those aircraft where the G1000 is the entire cockpit display and not just used as an upgrade from a 530. In these configurations the cost replacement would border on uneconomical and entitle more than just a box swap as shown in a before/after pics below for a Bell 407. And the G1000 has been standard equipment in the 407 since 2011. So with that commitment in place, I expect the G1000 to be supported and internally upgraded a lot longer than 275/650/750 or G3X. Just something to think of.
You'll find most large urban areas already have various restrictions on helicopter routing with some based on whether its of the single or twin engine variety.
Yes... But that requires either the G1000 NXi, or a software update to the G1000. Since the G1000 software has to be approved by the aircraft OEM, and there's not much incentive for them to do anything for their older birds, I think only Daher (TBMs) and Cirrus (?) have done so.
Our club's DA40 did go through a lot of tires and brakes, but it was still about 40% cheaper to maintain per hour than the metal birds were.
The G1000 has never been "just used as an upgrade from a 530", it is a full PFD+MFD glass cockpit including the navigator(s), radios and other avionics. In the piston world, either it came on the airplane or it didn't, there's no upgrade. They do have G1000 upgrades available for the King Air line and some Citations and other small jets, but even when that came out it was $350K to do the upgrade and is probably north of $500K now. Like your heli example, it's just not economical for them to certify an upgrade for pistons.
If you have a King Air or Citation Mustang with the G1000, you can upgrade it to the NXi "starting at 59,990 USD" per Textron. They don't list any other upgrades - It doesn't do them much good to offer support for older piston aircraft.
So here's the conundrum. Tech moves extremely fast, the FAA moves extremely slow. So, by the time avionics are certified, there are already components in them that are being end-of-lifed by their manufacturers. That means Garmin has one last chance to place an order for as many of that component as they will EVER need, for new manufacturing as well as repairs.
There’s at least one Mooney in the US with it.
A non-NXi? Where?
No conundrum or expiration date. Basically, Garmin has guaranteed Bell they will support the 407 G1000 in perpetuity. Its also my understanding there are one or two other OEMs with a similar deal. I think in the case of a 407, those who have a conundrum are the ones with the original analog panels with Litton indicators.
No such thing in electronics, save replacing the whole kit with something that fits in the same space and does the same thing 20 years down the road. But maybe that's the commitment they made - our screen, even if replaced and on a different platform, will fit in the hole and do the same thing.
There is no guarantee, contract, or other agreement that can make electronic components appear out of thin air. There is an expiration date... We just don't know what it is. Given the limits of economics, they may have gone with a 30+ year projected supply, but I can't imagine they'd be able to do more than that... And they really don't know what the weak link is yet so what was a 30-year supply might quickly become a 10-year supply.
Interesting... That's definitely not an NXi (all caps on the softkey labels) but it's a flightstream 210, not 510, and he says it was configured solely for flight plan transfer (no ADS-B In streaming of weather and traffic to portable devices).Don’t know it’s NXi or not; I believe it’s an Acclaim.
Flight stream in the G1000
Well, it is now done in the US as well. we got the flight stream working on my acclaim. Brian Kendrick has the only install in the US under his belt. I can’t wait to have this feature enabled in my g1000. It was the only thing I really missed from the NXI. This is great news!mooneyspace.com
I think we’re splitting hairs here. In 2011 the 407 was offered with the G1000H which was originally an option, then quickly became the only option. Around 2017 the G1000H NXi became standard equipment and its my understanding the G1000H NXi will eventually replace the original G1000H as needed but the G1000H support has no defined end date. And it was after the G1000H NXi was released that Bell developed the retrofit kit for the legacy aircraft to bring them into the G1000 fold per se.
Yup, in two weeks I'll be flying mine from Atlanta to Glacier and Yellowstone NP's in Montana/Wyoming, Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and back home. And it will fly like a dream, on half the gas of an SR22. Might take me 20% longer, but I'll be statistically more safe as well.
Well, there is data available. Just out of curiosity, what constitutes "many hours"? Just what I recall reading around 70hr/yr is average. 50 or less is low or what I'd consider "not many". 100hrs/yr or greater seems to be the goal.
aerista.com
I have a process to estimate the average annual flight time for homebuilts involved in accidents. It takes the date of the accident, subtracted by the manufacture date of the aircraft, and computes the annual flight time based on the total time at the accident.
