AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2011 - 82

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AVIONICS
and Garmin officials say they expect most customers to go with the redundancy of dual-AHRS installations. Garmin also offers its Electronic Stability and Protection (ESP) system—which helps pilots avoid unintentional stalls, spirals, and departures from controlled flight—as a G2000 option, as well as Garmin Synthetic Vision Technology. The G2000 is not being offered as a retrofit for G1000-equipped airplanes, and Garmin isn’t saying whether it will sell an Experimental version similar to the G900X, a non-TSO version of the G1000. The company also isn’t naming a price as G2000s (like G1000s before them) only are sold to new-aircraft manufacturers. In addition, the G2000 highlights an ongoing tension between Garmin— which would like to standardize its avionics offerings—and aircraft manufacturers who like putting their own stamps on them (i.e., Cirrus’s Perspective and the Embraer Prodigy both are customized versions of the G1000). Most aircraft manufacturers make their imprint by coming up with their own style of FMS interface, but that won’t be easy on the G2000’s touch-screen keypad (although the software and icons can be easily modified). Garmin brought in hundreds of pilots with varying experience levels and backgrounds to evaluate the G2000 and its touch-screen FMS during development. Most found the system easy to learn. “It’s more intuitive and more efficient than any comparable system,” Stone said. “That was true for new pilots right out of flight training, as well as high-time corporate and airline pilots with no previous Garmin experience.” Might Garmin someday do away with the FMS and go to an entirely touchscreen system with its big integrated avionics suites? Company officials aren’t ruling it out. But the biggest obstacle isn’t technology or cost. It’s simply finding a way for pilots to reliably touch the part of the screen they’re aiming for on a big piece of real estate like a 12- or 14-inch PFD or MFD screen. “Maybe someday,” Stone said. “But we won’t do it until we can find a way for pilots to accurately touch targets in the middle of the screen when their airplanes are flying in turbulence. Right now, that’s just not possible.” E-mail the author at dave.hirschman@ aopa.org.
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82 • MAY

2011

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2011

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