Mooney Garmin glass panel in-flight review (G3X, GFC500, GTN650Xi, etc).

hello aviators and muniacs whatever brings you here welcome to the z-man youtube channel today we are going to do a video i've been wanting to make for a few weeks now ever since picking up my airplane from its recently completed avionics install uh going to be reviewing the garmin glass panel here i wanted to wait to make this review until i felt like i had enough hours on the system to be able to speak to its functionality and have a good understanding of how everything works and making sure that i'm getting the most out of it so at this point i've got about 29 hours on the new system and i'm loving it it's it's really great i have the 10.6 inch g3x the g5 gfc 500 with electric pitch trim gma 245 audio panel gtn 650xi gnc 255a as a backup and a gtx 345 adsb fsb and out transponder so we got some decent weather today up here near the rochester minnesota area i'm just doing a little vfr cross country up to uniform bravo echo that's cumberland municipal so it's about let's see it's about 78 miles from here so i'll just record on the way up there and we'll go through my thoughts on the new system why i chose some of the equipment that i did as compared to some of the competitive options and how i'm liking it so far this video is not a how-to it's just a end user's thoughts and end users perspective on it i've got a bunch of g1000 time well maybe not a bunch but i've got about 450 hours or so of g1000 time at this point i've got about 45 hours or so on the g3x and about 30 hours on the rest of this stuff so i'm going to work my way from left to right here starting with the g3x again not a how-to just a 10 users just an end user's review of my purchase and how i'm liking it so far and comparing it to some of the competition so the g3 x here if you're watching this you're probably already familiar with the g3x you probably already know a lot about it it's a great system very clean layout we've got all of our critical flight information as well as highly configurable windows you can change these windows down here right now i just have them set up for traffic you see we can change the range here on the traffic and then our flight plan is on this side but you can change these to a number of different things on the right side got our engine monitor tap it open tap it closed and at the top we have our waypoint i'll show you the uh lean assist here so going on lean assist and i'm gonna lean it out just a little quicker than usual so you guys can get the idea of what it looks like here so as the mixture comes out those egts are going to come up and now we just hit peak on cylinder number three so we're going to lean a peak right now i'm getting enriching it just a touch and we'll cruise it peak egt some of the other information on here gallons uh quantity in our left and right tanks gallons per hour we've got the power pulled way back today since i'm just cruising for fun fuel pressure volts amps showing you some more fuel information over here all the good stuff going through some of the other pages these maps are all highly configurable so here i've got the fsb weather showing where the weather is you can see some of my old track logs there that i've cleared out yet got the minneapolis class bravo on the left it's set up to give me airspace alerts if i'm enters if i'm about to intercept some airspace and you can see the rest of my flight plan here if i loaded an approach you'd be able to see the approach on the map as well so lots of good stuff here i'm going to go ahead and click on an airport so we'll just click on the destination pull up you got all this really good info here frequencies runways weather the most recent weather was reported 13 minutes ago totems an aopa directory if you choose to keep that up to date and instrument approach charts airport diagram takeoff minimums that kind of stuff again you got to keep the aopa and the charts up to date with your garmin subscription moving on here we got the chapter or chart page rather so this is just a vfr chart uh got an ifr chart here if you want to be using that and so forth waypoint information i just showed you flight plan weather all this good stuff cloud tops the winds aloft temps loft air pyramids segments tfr information train traffic so you can click on them get your get their information so this guy 78 yankee getting his ground speed course he looks like he's about maybe 18 miles away or so gps and then we got our chds egt's engine and engine instrumentation that kind of stuff so why the g3x over some other options primarily what comes to mind is the dynon what also comes to mind is the dual or triple gi 275 install so why the g3x over some of those well for me i was getting an extensive job done an extensive avionics job the old panel had a lot going on behind it there was a lot of chaff wires a lot of things that were not working the way that they should so i needed to get pretty much everything in the panel replaced and when you're doing a job that that's that is that extensive you're looking at a new engine monitor you're looking at getting rid of the vacuum system uh you're looking at basically removing the entire original electrical system so there's a lot of work that needed to be done and with that amount of work it makes sense to go in and just replace everything scrap the whole original panel and start so the g3x was actually the most economical option when you look at it from that perspective so the comparable dynon for example or rather let's start with the gi 275 so why didn't i pick the gi 275s they were on the table the avionics shop and i did seriously discuss doing the gi 275s and after looking at how much it would have costed to do a triple gi 275 setup with the attitude indicator the hsi and also an engine monitor it really wasn't that much more expensive to go up to the g3x and then you've got the really intuitive touchscreen display with the synthetic vision really great eis interface along with all this other easily manipulated information as i just showed you so i would i was seriously considering the 275s to save a little bit of money and honestly i'm so glad that i didn't go with the 275s they are a good option for certain people in certain situations they're built from the ground up to be certified uh they i know they're very popular in the certified community and they're a great little unit but for me and what i was doing with having the entire original panel basically scrapped and rebuilt the the best option hands down without a doubt was the g3x it is super awesome and i'm so glad that i went with the g3x option so moving on here we got the backup instrument is the g5 again why the g5 over the gi 275 basically the g5 is its own independent source of ahar's information so if the if the g3x a hard source fails i can continue to use the autopilot flying the g5 i don't know for certain if that if the gi 275 will continue to fly the auto autopilot in the event of a g3x ahars failure but i do know that the g5 will 100 and honestly i think the g5 looks better next to the g3x and the other another stack here it fits that factory square form factor i think it's just all 33 kind of built to fit together also garmin originally designed the g3x and the g5 as instruments to be working together so they speak the same language if you will and they're they're they're designed from the ground up by garmin to work together also just what i use the g5 for pretty much is just changing the altimeter that's honestly about it the gfc 500 autopilot is super awesome you guys if you're here you probably already know about the gfc 500 it does everything it flies fully coupled gps approaches ios approaches we've got climbs descents heading mode nav mode it's it's really an autopilot that speaks for itself there's plenty of other youtube videos out there we're going to show you the gfc 500 and its features uh i'm just going to tell you that it's totally awesome and if you're getting an autopilot in my opinion there's no better option so the gma 245 basically the only uh the only thing to consider here is like going remote versus the physical audio panel i chose to go with the physical audio panel because ultimately i was kind of talked into it i wanted to go with the with the remote audio panel at first to kind of save some panel space and i thought it would be easy to use the g3x to do that but after getting the physical one installed i'm so glad that the physical one is in here it's really easy to swap between your comms and at just a quick glance you can see what's active and what's not if a transmission starts to come in for me i can mute the music unmute it when it's done play back and it's really cool to have all of these things very easily accessible rather than having to go through the touch screen and the buttonology on the g3x it's right here it's the same you know it's the same location every time same button press also it's very easy to show your passengers like okay this knob is for music this one's for intercom you know quieter louder that's easy to explain rather than me having to adjust their volume settings for them so physical audio panel is is really good for for this particular setup maybe if you had a gtn 750 then the uh the remote audio panel would make more sense but with the 650 setup i think that the uh i think that the physical one is the way to go in my personal opinion again for for my setup and my needs moving on to the gtn this is the 650xi i was considering at one point keeping the 430 in there and and after talking to avionics shop some more we decided that scrap the 430 get the full functionality out of the system i got good trade-in value for it number one five seven pounds with the xi the latest and greatest when you're doing a job of this size and scale it just makes sense to pull the trigger on everything and do it all at once if i would have had a 650 installed later on like say a year or two from now i would have gotten less trade-in value for my 430 and it would have been more expensive to go back in and wire in the 650 so it makes sense to do everything at once this installation also has the flightstream 510. basically the advantage of the flightstream 510 in this setup is that i can send approaches and i can use database concierge so i can send approaches instrument departures arrivals that kind of stuff from my ipad to the gtn and use the database concierge feature to update my g3x gtn databases do you need the flight stream in this particular setup no because the g3x has a bluetooth source that will connect your ipad you can send flight plans of course you're limited you can't send approaches or instrument procedures through the g3x to the gtn but with the flight stream you can so it's not like 100 necessary to have the flight stream 510 but you know user preference i have it in this installation and i like it as far as the gtn 650 versus the 750 why did i go with the 650 over the 750 well for one the panel is already pretty tight that's just a characteristic of moonies you can see here especially the f model the panel is fairly small so with this stack already you're seeing that there really isn't room for a 750 maybe there would have been room if i would have gone remote audio panel and move the gnc 255 over here but honestly i feel like with the 650 and the g3x really there's no reason that i needed a 750. the 650 does a great job i think it's big enough i think the text is big enough the flight plan i have no problem reading information loading procedures i'll load an instrument approach here rnav gps runway 3-1 preview i mean i i can preview it here and then let's see once i uh i'll load the approach and look over here on the g3x and it cross bills to the g3 x so and this screen is pretty much the same size if not bigger than a 750 screen i can't say for sure but it's pretty close and i just don't feel like there's anything in this particular setup that a 750 would have gotten me that i that i don't already have so it kind of felt like destiny we've never even even considered it really because a the panel is small and it would have taken up a lot of real estate and perhaps resulted in a kind of a weird looking configuration like the autopilot over here or something that just kind of looks strange anyways the 650 is a great unit i have zero regrets whatsoever with going with the 650 that plus the g3x display plus the ipad there's really no reason that that i needed a 750 in this setup and i i don't i feel like that's maybe just a little bit overkill and uh was not a necessary use of money so all right i think that about covers the 650 i'm super happy with it i'm glad that i went with the 650 over the 430. uh was never even considering the ifd and down to the gnc 255a here it's a great backup i can use it for vors ilses monitoring ground atis it has reverse frequency lookup and it identifies who i'm talking to right now so it's already identified in rochester ground rochester etus you can monitor the standby frequency that kind of stuff so the gnc 255a is a really good backup really in practice the only way that it's used is monitoring basically addis and ground and if i needed to fly an ils approach or navigate using vors due to a 650 going out then it could be used for that over to the gtx 345 adsb and out bisbee in it's just a transponder but it does everything and it does it well so not too exciting there again you know somebody might ask why did you go with the physical unit i don't know i just did whatever you can control the transponder through the g3x if you want but having the physical unit i guess is kind of nice you can get the timer so q10816 is it really yeah i don't i don't think it really matters if you have your transponder code as you go so so that is pretty much the left to right on this panel setup there are a lot of good options out there the gi 275s are a good option i think for certain situations the dynon is a good option but they as far as i know right now don't have an autopilot solution and it sounds like at least for moonies they're not coming out with one anytime soon and my personal preference is garmin all the way uh i just i've always used garmin i was trained on garmin and i have a good relationship with my garmin installation or my garmin dealer so i think you know garmin's just the way to go the way uh the way that they push the limits on general aviation and and provide us with these modern solutions and they come through with what they say they're gonna do i i support them as a brand and i think that they're the way to go for a like a highest quality level install for a real professional job like this where you're getting everything basically ripped out and replaced i love the garmin stuff enough on that so if you guys are uh or wanted to ask any questions feel free to drop them down in the comments i'll respond to all of your comments and if you live in in minnesota or the midwest and you want to meet up and go fly somewhere let's let's meet up and do that we can go do luncheon back or whatever so i'd love to meet with you guys i like uh joining up with other aviators and and having some fun maintaining support so that's all for today thanks for tuning in see you later

Channel: Z-man

Views: 1,869

Keywords: Mooney, Garmin Aviation, Garmin G3X, G3X, GTN650, GTN650Xi, GFC500, General aviation, Mooney Aircraft, Mooney M20F

Id: KM7hA76PFlQ

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022