Garmin G1000 IFR - GFC700 autopilot flight director mode management

this one bit me twice at one month I was flying a departure climb the controller said to me fly heading zero to zero join Victor 25 and resume own navigation so I set up zero to zero in the heading and I pushed nav to arm the GPS then the controller comes back to me and says fly present heading vectors for traffic what button would you push to reconfigure the autopilot a lot of pilots push heading to get themselves into heading mode watch what happens if we get the instruction to fly present heading for traffic and we press the heading button to go into heading mode we don't go into any mode do we instead we end up in roll mode and as we jump ahead to where the needle comes alive you can see that GPS mode was still armed and now it goes active and we turn to intercept the course that is not what ATC instructed us to do not only have I been bit by this issue but I had a student who got bit by the same procedure in the same place I taught him how to fix it and two weeks later he got bit again so I have a caution for you the GFC user interface is fundamentally different from most GA auto pilots yeah you're probably familiar with simply pressing a button to go into the mode you want and this is how most GA auto pilots work to go in a heading mode you simply press a heading button and you're there pressing the heading button a second time does nothing though since you already are in heading mode the GFC 700 operates differently it has what we call an on/off interface and to go into a mode you press the button to turn it on but if you press the button a second time it turns it off during your transition to the GFC 700 your fingers will do the wrong thing until you get used to this on/off behavior so you always need to check your modes before and after making new selections so let's break down the on/off modes in more detail some of the GFC 700 modes are what we call basic modes that means when you press the button the it immediately becomes active and is displayed in green so here I press the heading button and the heading mode became active if I press that button again the mode turns off and we return to the default mode which in this case is role you know ma CIC pilots forget about the default modes all the time just remember though role is the default lateral mode and pitch is the default vertical mode yeah it's a complete the picture if I'm in role mode and I press the heading button again heading mode will turn on I can go back and forth between heading in role by pressing the heading button over and over again so we saw how heading mode worked alt is another basic mode but since it operates vertically the default when you turn it off is pitch mode and that's true for most of the other vertical modes like vs indicated airspeed or flitch mode some of the other GFC 700 are what we call armed modes for example if we've selected GPS on our CDI and we press the nav button GPS mode will be armed and displayed in white now a really important point to remember is that armed modes only become active automatically for example GPS mode will go active only once the CDI needle starts to center glidepath mode will only go active once the glidepath needle centers right you can't force an armed mode to go active you must wait for the needle to Center if you try to force the mode by clicking the button again all that happens is it gets turned off in this case GPS mode has been disarmed and the annunciator went away and it turns out that can be handy there are times we want to prevent the airplane from capturing the course so we would simply disarm GPS by pressing the nav button but once the mode is active and has turned green the behavior changes pressing the button a second time will cause the GFC 700 to return to the default mode which in this case is roll so mossie let me ask you a question what happens if you inadvertently turn off GPS mode and try to turn it back on again by pressing the nav button well it won't immediately go act right it's in armed mode what happens is it gets armed and then right away it goes active because the needle is centered so now you have the big picture of armed modes another thing to watch out for is that sometimes you can armed multiple modes with one button for example if you're on a vector2 final and they clear you for the ILS approach pressing the approach button will arm both localizer and glides the nice thing is that you can disarm both of them simply by pressing the approach button again okay so I have a little quiz for you let's say we go back to our original scenario ATC told us to fly present heading for traffic which means we're not supposed to intercept the course if you press the heading button what will you get you will turn off heading mode and role mode will become active but GPS will still be armed so you will still intercept the course and I think ATC is going to be really upset with you now let me ask you something Peter what if you press the nav button instead well then you will disarm GPS mode you will remain in heading mode and fly through the course as instructed and I think ATC will love you we do have some pro tips for you because it will take a while for you to get used to this on/off behavior pro tip number one is you need to check your annunciators before and after you make button pushes this is a technique straight from the airlines even though they've mastered their auto pilots they use a very specific mode management procedure to avoid mistakes the first step of the mode management procedure is to check your current mode the reason being you might already be in the mode you want second press the button to change to the desired mode third confirm the new fight mode annunciators make sure you got what you selected and call them out fourth is really important make sure the aircraft is actually doing what you programmed it to do and if it's not fix it I can't tell you how many times the F mas have been right but the auto pod was in flight director mode or for some crazy reason it was simply doing the wrong thing so let's watch this in action using the original scenario however this time we're going to disarm GPS mode step one is to check the current modes GPS armed heading step two is to press the nav button to disarm GPS in step three we confirm the new F mas heading altitude 9000 and step four we make sure the aircraft is doing what it's supposed to be doing as the CDI is alive and it's enters here we make sure the aircraft does not turn on course the aircraft flies through the course which is what we were instructed to do so now let's say ATC instructs us to turn back to intercept the victor airway again we will use our four step mode management procedure step one we check the current modes heading out 9000 and step two we turn the heading bud back towards the course and we press the nav button step three we confirm the new mode so GPS is armed heading out 9000 and in step four we make sure the aircraft is turning to capture the course it is doing what we expect it to do so that is the mode management procedure and I have to tell you that has saved my bacon more than once you

Channel: FlyingLikeThePros

Views: 53,255

Keywords: Garmin G1000, g1000, g1000 ifr

Id: GF-kBdBgoWU

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2016