WAAS in Europe?

There is the ILS Energise signal which creates complications on the King autopilots… STEC I know nothing about.

However, if the autopilot is driven via a Sandel EHSI and has been wired to the EHSI’s FCS outputs (as it should have been) then it should not see a difference between ILS and LPV. That’s how mine will work if/when I install a “W” GPS. However I have the SN3500 model.

Various previous threads on the ILS Energise aspect…

I got the bit about all the internals being changed from a number of people who had it done, which just shows how little they knew

AlexTB20 wrote:

you don’t plan on upgrading your Garmin to WAAS any time soon?

He does not have a Garmin…

As for me, I was not eager to upgrade but was told by the school which uses my plane for certain IR training that it would bring them a lot of advantages. Once I got the unit back, I never regretted that money spent. It is very different in speed of handling, has a much larger database (which has ALL the waypoints of the RNAV approaches and also has more space for user waypoints) and works generally much faster and better. True, you can choose to upgrade one only (in which case obviously the 530 would be the choice) but then you loose some functionality between the two. I only have one, so it was not an issue, but if I had the 430/530 combo I would probably upgrade both.

AlexTB20 wrote:

On the same topic, is there any compact EHSI better than your Sandel 3500 worth upgrading to?

There is the Garmin G5, or you can go for the Aspen solution and use the ADI as stand by. I have the Aspen and I am very happy with it.

As for the autopilot question: I have the S-TEC 55X and it works perfectly with the WAAS setup. So I don’t see why the 60-2 doesn’t.

G5 is much less capable than a SN3500 – see e.g. here.

I have a KLN94+KMD550 and my LPV upgrade would be a GTN650+750 or 2×IFD540. Either way it’s a big job and I have no stomach for it right now. LPV is not really operationally relevant to me. If EGKA got LPV that would be different.

The number of runway ends in Europe which have LPV as their only 3D approach is large and growing quickly.

Having SBAS would be operationally relevant to the majority of GA instrument pilots who fly to smaller IFR airfields.

And having SBAS also enables smooth roll steering (whether a/p, f/d or hand flown).

Additionally, the visual approach functionality on the recent GTN software opens a world of possibilities.

I think that for some people SBAS is something that they don’t see the benefits of before they have it, but once they get it they don’t know how they managed before. It is transformative, especially with a roll steering autopilot.

The IR training world is likely moving to WAAS LPV for precision and NDB/DME or LOC for non precision. Dependent on LPV approaches being widely adopted.

Timothy wrote:

Additionally, the visual approach functionality on the recent GTN software opens a world of possibilities.

Timothy, have you tried this functionality with grass runways? It doesn’t work with our airfield (ESKC) and the only difference we can find compared to other non-licensed VFR-only club airfields we’ve tried (e.g. ESKT) is that ESKC is a grass airfield while the other ones have hard surfaces.

Also, oddly enough, it seems we can’t use ESKC as a VNAV target!

Timothy wrote:

ESKC does not seem to be in the Swedish AIP?

Yes it is. But you basically need to know it exists to be able to find it in the AIP.
https://aro.lfv.se/Editorial/View/4195/ES_AD_1_1_en

Hmmm….

I was going to suggest that it must have an AD 2 entry to qualify, but then ESOL, which is also not in AD 2, but does have a hard surface, does have Visual Approaches but ESGS doesn’t.

But many UK grass airfields (EGSL Andrewsfield and EGKA Shoreham were the examples I looked at) do.

So, it is not runway surface, it is not AD 2, it is not terrain (ESGS and ESKC are on flatlands) so I am out of ideas.

Ask Jeppesen?