Full GARMIN panel upgrade | Piper PA-28-181 Archer

how you doing everybody it's mike webb coming at you again with another video i mentioned in a couple of my previous videos that i did some avionics upgrades in my 1980 piper archer 2 and i decided today it'd be a great idea to go ahead and detail those changes that i made i'm going to talk about my decision process when i was trying to figure out what i wanted to add into the panel and why i'm hoping that you'll find this interesting today and if you do of course smash that like button as the kids say these days and if you're considering doing a panel upgrade yourself i'm hoping that this video you'll find informative because when i was trying to decide what components to put into my airplane for this upgrade i didn't find a ton of useful information out there and so i'm hoping that this may actually help some of you guys as well [Music] [Applause] [Music] now overall i was leaning towards putting garmin components into the panel because i'm very familiar with the products that garmin makes and i felt that generally speaking the resale value might hold up a little better in case i decide to sell down the road so with that said here are the details about what i did in my avionics panel upgrade so from the beginning i wanted to buy a plane for my leaseback operation that didn't need a lot of work i found a 1980 piper archer 2 and had all original components in it with the exception of a panel mounted gps that was the garmin gtn650 now this was a big factor in my purchase because i knew that whatever plane i got to use for my personal training and on the leaseback with the flight school had to have at least a decent gps in it all of them had at least a garmin 430 in it or better some wasps some not now the gtn 650 series of navigators part of the gtn family was actually uh the next generation of gps's after the gns 430 and 530 but i didn't think of that as a bad thing if anything it was a bonus even if i had to get over a bit of a learning curve so unless you were renting a plane with a g1000 in it which i had done for many hours and actually really liked i felt like this was a a pretty sophisticated gps to start with beside the point i wasn't interested in investing in my first airplane on a leaseback operation to be a full glass panel anyway so when i found this airplane i realized there was really nothing i was going to need to do to it other than comply with the adsb mandate that was coming up in january of 2020. so in other words this airplane was pretty turn key and ready to go and this was essentially the case for the first few months that i had it on the line at the flight school however i noticed that when i was flying it for some of my personal training from time to time that the attitude indicator would start to act up like it would roll out of sync for a few seconds and sort of show a bank and then come back to the center and then even on a few flights it would completely just go like 30 degrees out of bank even when i was flying wings level and it would stay there for several minutes until either landing or just on its own it would decide to sort of get back into its uh correct state of mind now fortunately every time it did this this malfunction essentially especially for more than a couple of seconds it was always in vmc conditions so there was really no imminent safety threat per se but you can imagine how if this happened in instrument conditions how it really put mine or any pilot's instrument skills to work now as to why this would happen that the attitude indicator would would sort of uh start to act up is it could be several things problems with a vacuum system problems with the pump or maybe even just the instrument in general and if it was the instrument specifically it was a good indication that that instrument is going to need overhaul or replacement very soon now relatedly the directional gyro or dg wasn't suffering from any of these side effects and so together with the amps at my school the ia we determined that this was probably specific to the instrument itself and not the vacuum system overall so i looked at overhaul options and even replacement options and the general consensus is that it's going to be at least four hundred dollars to overhaul the instrument as much as several hundred dollars to even a thousand dollars to replace it all together that's a lot of money to invest in a nearly 40 year old instrument and right around that same time i learned about the garmin g5 instruments that had recently become certified specifically also for the pa-28 the most of you out there probably already know about the garmin g5 it's basically a small pfd that fits in the same spot as the old attitude indicator and it depicts the artificial horizon just as the old instrument does but it also displays much more information like altitude and airspeed tapes vertical speed indications heading information and even turn in bank coordinated turn information you can also adjust the altimeter setting with a kohlsman window just like you could in the old instrument it's essentially a mini-sized version of what you'd find in a primary flight display or pfd from any of the major manufacturers in the glass cockpit now i had over 100 hours of flight time behind the g1000 at that point so i was well aware of the advantages of having those types of information on one display and also i was familiar with interpreting it with the tapes versus the round dial format albeit this is a much smaller version so i pretty quickly decided that i would rather put in a new g5 instrument in the same spot where the old instrument was rather than overhaul it or replace it was it more expensive to put in a new g5 of course but i figured the added value it would provide to the panel was worth it between the extra capabilities and the wow factor that it would give to the panel i decided that it was well worth the cost and i really didn't even think twice so now here's where the fun part starts i'd heard that if i had two g5 instruments installed and what they call a dual g5 installation that i could potentially remove the entire vacuum system altogether maintaining the vacuum system in a 40 year old airplane can be pretty expensive and maintenance intensive and i was pretty sure that this instrument was not the only one that was going to need attention in the short term future now the vacuum system removal is possible because in a dual g5 installation one of the g5s replaces the attitude indicator and the other one replaces the directional gyro now much like the g5 that replaces the attitude indicator the one that goes in the dg spot is quite the serious upgrade the second g5 is essentially an electronic horizontal situation indicator or hsi which is a considerable gain in functionality from the basic directional gyro with a heading bug among other things it can revert to the pfd if the one above it actually fails in any situation this creates a level of redundancy along with the fact that each instrument has its own backup battery if the ship were to lose power since both are electronic instruments the vacuum system can go all together and i didn't have any other vacuum driven equipment on the airplane like de-icing boots to be concerned with now an exception to this would be if i had an autopilot that ran off of the old attitude indicator which i did but when you're installing a dual g5 setup from garmin they have adapters like the gad 29b where although it might be a little bit clumsy you can actually keep the older legacy autopilots and still have them get some heading information and drive them off of the g5s is it clunky yes is it doable yes so i had to put some serious thought into whether i was going to do just one g5 or go ahead and do both for the dual setup but we'll get to that a little bit later now as i said earlier everything in the airplane was original from 1980 with the exception of the garmin gtn 650 that included the audio panel which was really starting to show its age compared to more modern digital panels and the transponder which at minimum was going to be needing replacement so that i could meet the adsb mandate so i started shopping around for quotes to upgrade the transponder to meet the adsb mandate and to potentially do one g5 or maybe even both if you've ever looked into doing avionics upgrades on a plane and you've talked to owners and avionics shops one of the biggest responses you'll get from all of them regardless of where they're coming from is if you're going to get into the panel to do one thing you might as well tackle several things while you're already back there because it takes a lot of time and labor to get behind the panel and access all of those instruments and all of their wiring the point being that the labor is really quite extensive and so you might as well avoid having to pay for it again later so i was fortunate enough to be in a position where i actually could consider whether i wanted to spend the money to do some more things while i was there but this is also where the term project creep really can come into play because there are so many great things you can do today to take a panel that was created decades ago and really bring it into the 21st century if you really do desire to do so and you can spend an awful lot of money doing that so long story short i decided to go with the dual g5 setup so i could remove the potentially costly to maintain vacuum system all while adding the vastly superior capabilities and redundancy of the electronic screens i felt this would be a great compromise between the old tried and trued six-pack steam gauge cockpit panel and the newer generation full glass cockpits now speaking of glass cockpits another feature i really enjoyed about the g1000 was the real-time fuel flow and engine parameters information the analog fuel gauges and aircraft like mine from decades and decades ago are notoriously inaccurate and actually by law are only required to be accurate for one reading when the airplane is empty that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence even if you master the concept and practice of estimated fuel burn settings from knowing your power settings and the duration of flight it's a great basic skill to have let's be honest but it really pales in comparison to the accuracy of these modern engine monitors that display with any power change or mixture adjustment the real-time fuel flow endurance fuel required your destination etc so i started to explore ways i could make as many upgrades as possible within my budget i was actually fortunate enough to get some credit from my installer on some of the components that were currently in the panel and that opened up some doors for me i decided to add the jpi edm 830 engine monitor this gave me real-time fuel flow that i was just referring to with the exact fuel burn because of fuel transducers that are calibrated properly with the k factor involved and allowed me to actually monitor real chts and egts for my cylinders which at that point i didn't have that capability built into the panel this decision alone was a major upgrade to the utility of flying and the ease of actually staying aware of my engine's health i also decided to add the garmin gma 350c audio panel which enabled bluetooth streaming of music to all the occupants in the airplane 3d audio and the intelligence feature which is pretty useful actually from time to time i added the garmin gtr225 as a secondary com and it actually replaced my existing second nav com source i decided to go with a secondary com only and not a nav com and the money i saved there helped me with some of the other ideas i had for the panel specifically when i was looking at the transponder upgrade i had some initial ideas about how i was gonna cross that hurdle but i decided with the savings from the other decisions i made to go ahead and put in the garmin gtx 345 while it's definitely not the cheapest solution the gtx 345 provides adsb out and in which gives me traffic and weather on the gtn 650 and on a portable device like my ipad without having to set up the use of a stratus or some sort of portable adsb receiver another thing i decided to add was the garmin flightstream 510. if you haven't heard of it it's essentially a card that replaces the standard sd card that you use to update databases in your panel mounted gps it's blue in color and has bluetooth and wi-fi built into it this enables garmin's database concierge where instead of removing the cards taking them home sticking them into a computer or a card reader updating the databases there then returning the card to the to the gps inserting the card and uploading them there instead i can show up with my ipad where i've downloaded the databases at home overnight show up to the airplane flip a switch and with a push of a button i can transfer those database updates over the air in a matter of seconds this is really so much nicer and convenient than the old-fashioned way and believe me i've done both so i know what i'm talking about also with the 510 you can sync flight plans from your mobile device to your panel mounted gps and vice versa this is nice when your flight plan that you've developed at home involves a convoluted route of many waypoints that would be really a bear to manually enter one by one into your gps in the airplane or when atc edits your route on flight you can make a change on the panel or on your mobile device and with a simple push of a button you can confirm the swap between the two now finally i mentioned earlier that i had to sort of decide whether to remove the vacuum system or not for the dual g5s being that one thing i needed to consider is how would it affect my current autopilot setup well after much deliberation i decided to ditch the entire vacuum system all together and instead of trying to figure out the workaround with the legacy autopilot i decided to just go ahead and replace the autopilot altogether now it helped that i received some credit for my existing autopilot components but in the end i decided to install the newly certified at the time gfc 500 for my piper archer now once again my experience in the g1000 really informed my decision-making process when i was looking at this autopilot and that's because in the g1000 i had over 100 hours behind it with the integrated gfc 700 autopilot on many cross-country trips where i was able to experience firsthand how excellent that autopilot is from altitude capture to following a gps waypoint etc it's really a fantastic autopilot all together and basically having experienced that and then using the autopilot that came in the archer i really could tell the difference between analog and the new digital autopilots and their capabilities the gfc 500 was touted to have all the bells and whistles of the gfc 700 but including some newer features that even the gfc 700 didn't have like garmin's esp which protects against over speeding and under speeding conditions and even the blue level buttons so that no matter what happens if you just push one button the airplane will fly straight and level so after the fact let me tell you this was absolutely worth the cost many of you who may be out there and have looked at the gfc 500 autopilot you may be thinking the same question did i decide to go ahead and get the optional trim servo as well well the answer is yes i hem didn't haw about this one for a while i mean it really isn't that hard to manually trim the airplane when it's on autopilot especially since the g5s actually provide a prompt for you to say trim up or trim down but it really is so nice to have the plane just do all the work for you like it did in the gfc 700 that i was used to and the fact is it's a relatively small fraction of the cost to add that option so as you can see what started as a i have to upgrade my transponder for the adsb mandate and maybe add a single g5 project really turned into quite a transformative overhaul of my panel now as for what was removed in the job the entire vacuum system a slew of king products including the kma 20 audio panel the kx 170b navcom cdi adf system glideslope dme the kt 76 transponder as well as the garmin gi 106 cdi the s tech pss-60 system both of which i actually received credit for as i mentioned before the original piper autopilot both of the existing ai and dg gyro instruments and the turn and bank indicator with all the associated plumbing wiring and accessories i gained over 60 pounds a useful load when this job was done that in itself can be considered a pretty substantial increase in value for the airplane and that's before you even factor in the increase in avionics capabilities when all was said and done this turned out to be a much bigger project than i originally intended to do but i kept thinking about how much i would really enjoy flying the airplane if i made these changes and how much more appealing i felt that the renters and students would find it in the flight school because it was indeed going to be going on lease back well i can certainly attest to the first part that it is very true i've taken my family on several trips in it and all kinds of weather and the gfc 500 autopilot is solid as a rock it will fly approaches down to lpv minimums and i've done so it really is a fantastic autopilot the jpi 830 has helped me uncover some problems with a few of my cylinders that i would not have known about had i not installed that engine monitor and now i keep a close eye on them to make sure they stay within all the parameters i want to keep them nice and healthy and with the improved fuel flow data i have i never have to worry whether my math is right or those inaccurate fuel gauges are reading properly now additionally i've got nothing but incredible feedback from all the instructors i know at the school and many of the renters that i've gotten to know as well they say that all of the above is the same for them too they really appreciate the added capabilities they love especially the g5s because it's the perfect hybrid between steam gauge six-pack basic training skills to the full glass cockpit of a da40 or sierra something like that and now it even turned out to be more beneficial than i ever even imagined soon after i had all of these changes done the faa changed the rules on the required aeronautical experience for commercial pilot applicants until then you needed a minimum of 10 hours in a complex aircraft and most if not all check rights for commercial airplane applicants were conducted in a complex aircraft however the faa conceded with this rule change that many flight schools found maintaining these aging airframes with retractable gear whether it was one two or however many they had proving very difficult as they got older that and in keeping with the trend of modern avionics the faa changed the rules to state that in lieu of those 10 hours in the complex aircraft the applicant could have 10 hours in a technologically advanced aircraft or taa to qualify as a taa this means the plane must have a pfd a moving map gps that displays mfd-like data and a two-axis autopilot with the dual g5 setup the gtn 650 and now the gfc 500 my archer was now considered a technologically advanced aircraft and meant that it could take a pilot all the way from their private license through instrument training and all the way to their commercial license as well all in the same plane so i'm happy to report that more than one pilot actually has followed this career path where they got everything from their ppl all the way up to their commercial license in the same plane also i immediately benefited from the rule change as i conducted my commercial training and the check ride in my own archer so in my mind even though it was really expensive relatively speaking i felt the job was completely worth it the plane has increased in value although as we all who look into these things know the odds that i'm gonna get my investment back if i ever decide to sell the plane are next to zero i know but just as importantly i enjoy the upgrades and the increased capabilities they provide immensely and i take pride in how capable the airplane is now and how well set up the panel really is finally there is no question that the upgrades that i made to this aircraft have absolutely helped the bottom line in terms of my lease back this i said it in my other videos and i'll say it again here the costs of doing these upgrades have been repaid for easily by the increase in hours in activity in the flight school would i be farther in the black if i hadn't done these panel upgrades probably would it be as popular with students and renters and therefore fly as much if i hadn't done all of these upgrades most definitely not but above all else i love the changes that were made it was my first plane and although i liked it just the way it was when i bought it i have now made it mine that could be considered priceless so what do you guys think if you liked this video and found it helpful or informative smash that like button again as the kids say these days and if you want to follow more of what i'm doing please subscribe and hit the notification bell and of course youtube will let you know the second i release a new video for you i've got many more ideas that are working right now and i'm super excited about bringing more and more content to you guys one of my ideas is to actually go up in the airplane and actually take some videos of a lot of these avionics i've talked about in use so you can see how they apply in the real world so i'll see you next time but until then as always don't fly too low or too slow you

Channel: Mike Webb

Views: 18,224

Rating: 4.8668685 out of 5

Keywords: avionics upgrade, garmin gtx 345, gtn 650, gtr 225 garmin, gfc 500 autopilot, piper archer ii, jpi edm 830 engine monitor, plane avionics, garmin g5, garmin g5 hsi, piper avionics upgrade, gfc 500 digital autopilot, dual g5 garmin, flight stream 510, flight stream 510 card, garmin g5 autopilot, piper pa 28, piper pa28, piper archer, mike webb, flight stream 510 database update

Id: XHUn2cf4HT0

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/jrcox19]

I was under the impression that 2 G5s + GFC 500 wasn't a TAA. Is that not the case anymore?