Garmin G5 (merged thread)

It supports GPS / VOR / LOC guidance but no mention of glideslope. I wonder why not?

I missed that – thank you.

Seems to be an interesting alternative to Aspen.
But as I understand it will not output the hdg bug and will not be able to drive the autopilot.
Otherwise I would be interested to look closer at it.

I think it’ll output that stuff over CAN bus, but the problem is nothing autopiloty outside of the experimental world talks CAN bus.

pmh wrote:

But as I understand it will not output the hdg bug and will not be able to drive the autopilot.

I would bet good money that Garmin are working on an STC for the G3X autopilot in certified aircraft. The EAA project which spawned all of this “experimental” equipment coming to the certified world has been working with trutrak to get their autopilot STCed.

That would surely require the entire G3X system to be certified? Is that likely? And if so, then the G5 being certified is suddenly much less important – not that I would want to discourage Garmin from certifying the G3X, I would be close to the front of the queue for that especially if the autopilot was certified.

To my way of thinking there are a lot of older, but still perfectly viable certified aircraft that would benefit from an affordable (in that context) upgrade to glass.

Just looked at the Trutrak website and they are looking after the next plane to be certified after the Cessna 172…

So I would expect announcement from them for Oshkosh on their autopilot in the Cessna 172. If Trutrak is that far, Trio, Garmin, Dynon will also have a low cost AP solution soon. I see that the first APs coming from the experimental world to be allowed in certified planes will be typically 2 axis Roll with altitude hold and potentially GPS approach. But none will follow an ILS except potentially the Garmin one. For the US, this is typically a non issue if you have a WAAS navigator as you have LPV at about every airport.

But none will follow an ILS except potentially the Garmin one. For the US, this is typically a non issue if you have a WAAS navigator as you have LPV at about every airport.

Why is an ILS treated differently to LPV from the autopilot point of view? The guidance is basically the same. In fact it can be exactly the same signals, although in traditional (pre-LPV) avionics there is a distinction for historical reasons.

Peter wrote:

Why is an ILS treated differently to LPV from the autopilot point of view? The guidance is basically the same. In fact it can be exactly the same signals, although in traditional (pre-LPV) avionics there is a distinction for historical reasons

The ARINC labels are different. Also low end experimental autopilots have only one ARINC input when you typically need 2 when you want to interface with a GTN/GNS to get ILS and RNAV.
Trutrak has a high end autopilot (sorcerer) that does both ILS and RNAV, but decided to first get an STC for their lower end autopilot with a Cessna 172. Not clear why.