Trio Autopilot in Cessna 172

[Hangontight]

My avionics guy started installing my Trio autopilot in the 172L this week. Servos went in quickly and easily. He's working on installing the control head but I told him to 'clean up' old wiring behind the panel while he's in there....didn't realize what a rats nest that was going to be....I think he's pulled about 10-15 lbs of old wiring and connectors so far. Since we're at it I have him installing a new Garmin audio panel and reconfiguring my avionics stack too. I will post a write-up on install and initial impressions once he's done. This is the first one he's installed but so far no trouble at all on the install. Curious to know of those that have the Trio, did you need to adjust the factory set gains or were they good to go out of the box?

 

[FORANE]

I've installed a few of them in experimentals. Seems I never got gain settings that I was happy with. Somewhat acceptable gain settings, yes; happy with, no. It will likely perform much better in a 172 with huge control throws required for attitude changes. Pretty easy to adjust them in flight if you decide to play with it a bit.

I really like the trios ability to turn on pitch and roll servos independently. On approaches I frequently will leave the roll servo on and hand fly the pitch.

 

[rangerz]

The Comanche I co-own has had a trio for just over a year now. I started flying it a couple months ago and while the vertical performance was solid, the horizontal tracking has been erratic with somewhat random hunting and over correction. We just had the gains adjusted this week and the partner who flew it after said it was much better so I'm hopeful to see improvement. It's fairly easy to use and plays well with our Garmin GTN650 and G5's.

 

[wellknow]

My avionics guy started installing my Trio autopilot in the 172L this week. Servos went in quickly and easily. He's working on installing the control head but I told him to 'clean up' old wiring behind the panel while he's in there....didn't realize what a rats nest that was going to be....I think he's pulled about 10-15 lbs of old wiring and connectors so far. Since we're at it I have him installing a new Garmin audio panel and reconfiguring my avionics stack too. I will post a write-up on install and initial impressions once he's done. This is the first one he's installed but so far no trouble at all on the install. Curious to know of those that have the Trio, did you need to adjust the factory set gains or were they good to go out of the box?

how did the auto pilot work?

 

[Hangontight]

We just finished it Friday. I had a bunch of other work done while it was in there. I'll report back once we get some decent weather and I can try it out.

 

[SixPapaCharlie]

I want one

 

[Daleandee]

I have the Trio EZ auto pilot in my experimental. Tweaked the settings a bit but I find it to work very well now that it's sorted out ...

 

[Skyrys62]

Have a buddy that has had issues with his.
According to him, the servos have plastic gears that didn't do well. Also had the over correction issues, but mostly in light turbulence.
They said servos with metal gears are coming.

 

[frfly172]

Been waiting for quite some time for the auto pilot to be approved for the Cessna 150/152 airplanes.

 

[Hangontight]

Review and report:
The autopilot works pretty well straight away. At first it had some significant 'hunting' which was quickly remedied by some in-flight adjustment to the gains. The autopilot works as advertised. The 'buttonology' takes some getting used to so study the manuals before going flying.

One of the big things is that you gotta know where with airplane in trimmed and work with the autopilot on that. I shot 2 coupled approaches (in VMC) and the autopilot will fly it right down to the numbers if you let it. There will be a learning curve with adjusting the trim/power/flaps at the point where the autopilot captures the glide slope.

I think one more flight to tweak the gains and I'll have it dialed in nicely. Overall, I would highly recommend the Trio to anyone looking for a cost effective autopilot solution. Jeff at The STC Group was fantastic with helping in the set up. He answers the phone and knows the system very well and is great at explaining the details over the phone. Customer service gets a 10 out of 10.