Flying the GTN650

I can’t possibly tell you how excited I am to have the new Garmin GTN650 installed in our Mooney. I’ve flown the airplane on four test hops to check out the performance of the unit and am pleased to say that while there is a learning curve, at this point it seems like it will be a quick and short one. I had initially wanted to purchase a GNS430W and actually did so but after dropping the airplane at VIP in Hartford on a Friday I received a somber call from Rob Lenert Monday morning telling me that the units were backordered until June 10^th.   Seems that the GNS430W displays are manufactured in an area of Japan that was ravaged by the Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear disaster and Garmin cannot source them anywhere else..

He didn’t have any confidence that the June date was real so I opted to buy the new touch screen technology as it was in stock at his distributor and could be installed that week. It was an additional $2500 that I was hoping to use to help pay for a  GTX30 Transponder and traffic but instead I decided  on installing a STEC GPSS roll steering module to add that functionality to my autopilot.

I was told the airplane would be ready in eight business days so I spent a week and a half reading everything I could about the GTN series and was real excited about the reviews in all of the popular trade magazines. I couldn’t find any information on the GPSS module except a few reviews from when it was released but I have flown it numerous times and have wanted one since I had the STEC 20 installed in 2007. I would have bought one then but the KLN89B I had in the panel didn’t have roll steering output so I had to wait.

When Wednesday finally arrived I got an email from Dave at VIP saying they were finishing up with the plane. In my excitement I told him I would be over to get it without checking on how I was getting to HFD and what the weather was outside. The least I can say is it was a little windy. I rented a car and started driving up Interstate 84 and the Avis subcompact was getting blown across lanes of traffic. When I arrived in Hartford around 3:30 my plane was on the ramp hooked up to a ground power unit. While Rob and Dave finished the paperwork inside I sat in five eight victor and admired the first class installation the VIP team put together. This was my fourth panel upgrade with them in eleven years and I have to say each and every time my buyer’s remorse abates as soon as I view the quality of their work. In this instance they fabricated a new sheet metal rack to contain the new Garmin and my legacy Bendix/King equipment which totally exceeded my expectations.

As we sat in the airplane Rob explained to me various features of the new equipment and I wrote him a check. The wind was gusting well into the thirty’s back in Danbury and wasn’t due to die down until after sunset and even then not appreciably. The direction was widely variable as well so I debated turning my rental car in thinking it might be more judicious to drive it home and continue the next day. However when faced with the prospect of driving home and then back to Hartford the next morning during rush hour I decided fly.  I blasted off runway 2 with the left turn to the southwest.

Naturally I had to try it all out so I put KOXC and KDXR in the flight plan and then engaged the autopilot and roll steering. The airplane tracked OBS centered to Oxford with a stiff crosswind and then made the turn to Danbury flawlessly. Since then I have taken it out and done a few short flights ending in an ILS, GPS (L-Nav, L-Nav+V, LPV) with procedure turns and missed approaches and holds.

The little GPSS module turned my limited autopilot into something real useful and having the new Garmin with WAAS along with its large, high quality, moving map display, taxi diagrams and terrain has added a different level of utility to my old bird. I can’t wait to fly it more, then sit down and modify my personal minimums checklist.