Trutrak Vizion Autopilot in a Cherokee | Review and Tutorial | LPV Approach |BendixKing Aerocruze100

[Music] [Applause] [Applause] this my nap come over already I'm Eric private pilot based in Los Angeles join me and my family upon our aviation adventures throughout Southern California and beyond [Music] when they first announced a two-track autopilot I was really excited about a more affordable auto pilot coming of a certified market having an affordable auto pilot really reduces the workload it lets you turn around and like check in with your family sometimes on long trips makes flying a little bit more enjoyable this auto pilot is a modern capable auto pilot and because true track has brought it to the certified market at a specific price it puts it within reach for a lot of pilots I had the true track vision and the Dinan HDX system installed at st. aviation in Florida and I made the trip out there from Los Angeles to Florida without an autopilot and on the way there and then with the auto pilot on the way back and it makes such a huge difference stoked to be able to share the true track auto pilot with you guys I'm going to do a full review in flight on the way from Whiteman to Apple Valley California and in the future I'm going to be doing a couple follow up videos on the finer points of operation of the auto pilot so subscribe the channel click the bell get in the loop on everything if you haven't already checked out the full review I did on the dine on HDX check that out on the channel and also some of our trip videos like the Sedona trip video that one's a fun one oh by the way I would never sit alone in the back of an airplane with an auto pilot on board I encourage anybody to do it that was just a bit of movie magic alright let's check it out through track vision auto pilot for certified is a two axis modern digital autopilot it's got a pitch servo and a roll servo underneath the floorboards here in the Cherokee there is no trim servo you do the trim with the manual trim system also has a power switch that turns the autopilot on the autopilot has a control head this is the two and a quarter inch control head there's also a three and an eight inch and a flat-pack that's available on the control head there is a LCD screen a mode button an altitude button and a center knob that rotates and pushes in four selections there's also a blue emergency level button when you're in an unusual attitude and you're spatially disoriented you could push this blue level button and the auto pilot will recover the aircraft to straighten level flight in my installation there is a auto pilot source select switch this switch determines if the auto pilot is connected to the avid ion IFD 540 or the dine on HDX when the autopilot is connected to the avid ein it receives via airing 429 GPSS roll steering commands from the avid ein flight plan when the true track is connected to the HDX it receives a heading bug altitude bug and vertical speed bug and it'll follow those bugs I believe that true track is also able to connect to the Aspen e5 and Garmin g5 and I think it'll take the heading bug and the altitude bug from the Garmin and it'll take the heading bug from the Aspen but I think they're currently working on the altitude bug as of the date of the publication of this video there's also a control wheel steering button on the yoke to disengage the autopilot you press and release the control wheel steering button if you hold the control wheel steering button down when the autopilot is engaged and turn to a new track then release the button the autopilot will adopt the new track and the current vertical speed all right that's an overview let's see this thing in action let's go flying sky clear temperature 1 v 2.3 altimeter 3 0 to 7 do our alpha circuit approach runway 1 so I've got the barometer I'm dialing that into my HDX 3 0 to 7 I need to dial in my barometer setting on the true track it doesn't automatically take it from the dine on HDX and I believe with the Aspen e5 in the Garmin g5 those units will actually automatically take the barometer setting from your digital Eva's but for the HDX I've got to press out twice then I've got a synchronize the altitude that it's displayed here with the altitude on the HDX the HDX shows 980 and I'm going to set this to as close as I get to 982 979 so I turn the knob and then I'm going to push it in set it now my altitude my barometer is essentially synced between the true track and the digital EFA's here as we're taxiing here we're going to do a check on our true track it says GPS ok and there's a flashing asterisks which means that it is communicating with the avid ein 540 if I'm under 10 knots it'll say the GPS status there once I get taxiing above 10 knots it's gonna display the track alright so now I'm going above ten knots you can see the track is displayed there boooo 9 to 11 track information that the true track displays is it's partly GPS track but it's also got an internal gyro so it's a gyro assisted track and it's not subject to the usual GPS lag GPS track I've got a flight plan loaded in my avid ion IFT 540 and when I activate that I'm going to go ahead and activate that now the flashing asterisk changes to a plus on the true track that means that there's an active flight plan and it's communicating with the GPS okay so departing out of here we're gonna get a left downwind departure and we're gonna have to stay under the Burbank class charlie shelf which is 3,000 feet so I'm going to pre-select an altitude on the autopilot of 2,800 feet and I do that by pressing alt but when I turn the knob it increments the altitude numbers by 500 so I can go from 2500 to 3,000 now to do it by 100 you push the knob in and rotate it so there's 2800 and then I push it again to set it oh I've got my altitude pre-selected here to 2800 when I take off and after I get about a thousand feet above the ground all engage the autopilot by pushing in this butt and it'll grab on to my current track and it will grab on to my current vertical speed and will make the airplane climb up to 2,000 - Star Trek these extreme wants Bravo whiskey Bonjour want to enough for left a large takeoff at the left hand like departure runway 1 2 6 3 1 Bravo whiskey there's a green piece alive [Music] all right I'll find up on the left daylight departure here I can go ahead and engage the autopilot by pushing in the center knob right there it grabs on to my track grabs on to my vertical speed of 600 feet and is gonna climb at 600 feet per minute on that current track up to 2,800 feet do you have an altitude pre-selected and your climb rate is less than five four hundred feet per minute when you engage the autopilot it will choose 500 feet per minute as your climb rate so we're 2300 and we're climbing now we can really look out for traffic here the underlined here under the 3:06 on SEL that but the selected track is 3:06 I want to do is go a little bit to the left because I don't want to run out of the climb up higher up to five I'm gonna turn in the direction of my course manually we're still climbing at 600 feet per minute to 5,500 I'm gonna hold the control wheel steering button down now and the autopilot shows I'm in control wheel steering mode I'm gonna make that turn and I'm going to manually hold my climb right here I'm just kind of turning around and I get in the direction of my GPS course just to demonstrate this control wheel steering function I'm turning here up in the direction of my course and it's gonna let go the control wheel steering and I let go of the button it picks up the track that I'm pointing on and my vertical speed and I just gonna press out and I'm gonna reset my altitude that I want to climb to now I'm gonna go up to 7500 at 600 feet per minute that's fine we're climbing on the zero five three track up to 7500 and it wants a little up trim if you let go the control wheel steering button and your climb rate is under 400 feet per minute it'll go into V as zero mode it's not altitude it's just vertical speed zero and it will maintain zero vertical speed zero climb rate but if you have like up drops or down drops you'll still gain and descent altitude it's not going to try to like fight to get to a specific altitude it's just going to hold the vertical speed at zero they say this mode is useful for flying in turbulence that it's a more comfortable to you know fly in turbulence in that mode all right we're 6300 climbing at 7500 and I'm going to activate the GPS s mode an autopilot source select switch is switched over to the Abidine 540 so the true trek will receive GPS s roll steering commands from the avid eye you can also hook up like a handheld portable to the true track but it won't do like turn anticipation it won't fly procedure turns and holds an IFR certified GPS navigator like the IMT 540 when it's connected via air a 429 the true track will fly like anything really that's drawn on the on the IFT flight plan like seed your turns and holds and to get me arcs and things like that it'll fly those curves oh I've activated the leg and I'm gonna press GPSS moto press the mode button here which will put me in GPSS mode and it should turn over and intercept the course our GPS s mode autopilot is making a right turn we're still climbing at any point I can adjust my vertical speed right here because the cursor is under the S vs the selected vertical speed there I can just turn this knob right on left and adjust the vertical speed if I want to Oh autopilot GPS says roll steering is going to intercept this course it says it's achieved a course intercept angle here the desired course is zero five seven and bear on a track of one zero for right now on a 45 degree intercept for this course and we're getting close to our altitude here we're gone into altitude hold mode I'll anticipate this by powering back a little bit here as we get to our altitude all right look we're starting to intercept the course turning left here now we're holding altitude here at 7500 so we've successfully intercepted the course and we'll just get it trimmed down to track vision autopilot it definitely tends to be a little finicky and asking for so I usually trim it till the annunciation goes away and then I kind of don't worry about it unless I make a major like power adjustment or climb rate adjustment or something now the true track has intercepted the course pretty well I'll show you one other cool feature if I just hold my finger on the avid eye and draw another waypoint rubber band here and let go and then activate it debate the rubber band the autopilot will automatically just burn to intercept that course so here it goes it's making a turn they didn't even have to do anything because it's still in GPSS mode all I need to do is redraw something different on the that avid I'm okay another thing to do I'll just do instead of intercepting the course I'll just press direct and we'll go direct back to our Waypoint that's gonna make the turn all I pressed was direct enter enter auto pilots doing everything else but they were going to Apple Valley why are we going to Apple Valley today because they have a cool LPB approach where we can check out the capabilities of this auto pilot and they got really cheap gas which is a great reason to go somewhere true trek has a pretty cool safety features one is the emergency level button which when you're in an unusual attitude will recover the aircraft into a straight and level orientation so we're gonna test that out right now they'll be in a climbing left turn I'm gonna let go of the yoke and I'm going to press the emergency level button right now I've got the autopilot disengaged I manually flying the aircraft alright unusual attitude sort of and then just press the button I let go of the yoke and it goes to a zero Degree Bank mode in a vertical speed zero mode oh let the nose go down now it's raising the nose back up after it's leveled the wing as it goes into a track mode and it grabs on to a track selected zero five seven as the track and now it's making its way over there and it's just gonna hold me at a zero vertical speed on a zero five seven track you can see like in an emergency or you get totally spatially disoriented you can just press that and it'll get you back you know the shiny side up emergency level button is the second way of engaging the autopilot the other way is as I showed before what you push in a knob those are the two ways to engage it three ways to disengage it or depressed and release the control wheel steering button to hold the center knob in for a while like I think it's over one and a half seconds or to flip the autopilot power switch so three ways to disengage another safety feature is the automatic envelope protection mode which will prevent you from going into greater than 40 degree banked turns I've disengaged the autopilot and over here you can see that the AEP automatic envelope protection mode is off when we press mode it goes into standby but that means that it is standing by monitoring my bank angle now if I've been I'm gonna make a big turn to the left at 45 degrees and I'll let you know what it what the auto pilot tries to do I manually controlling the aircraft autopilot is disengaged and I'm turning right here at 45 it's nudging me back shows AEP active it touches me back feel that you'll have to trust me on this so you can feel the resistance and the yoke it just like nudges you back oh that's a really cool safety feature if you're worried about over banking at any point it kind of gives you a little bit of a reminder if you or somebody who has a tendency I guess on makes the final turn to over Bank or you're flying into like mountainous strips at slow speeds or something it might be a good feature to have active one final safety feature that I want to tell you about is the minimum maximum air speeds when the Installer configures the autopilot the Installer will set a minimum and maximum airspeed so if you have a climb rate that's programmed to be like 1,300 feet and you get into like a high density altitude you'll be bumping up against your minimum airspeed this will prevent the autopilot for pitching up so much that the airspeed bleeds off too much and then the aircraft stalls same thing on the descent it won't let the airplane exceed a certain speed that is pre-programmed in there those are all adjustable configurable in it by the Installer but though you can set this minimum maximum airspeed if there's no indicated airspeed climb mode which is a little bit of a bummer to tracks other auto pilots that do have an indicated airspeed climb mode so hopefully it's something that they can implement in the future I know the demand seems to be there from the user base for the track vision for certified has a mode where it can couple to an LTV wide slope and fly an LPD approach according to the flight manual supplement of the true Trek vision for certified the autopilot is technically not certified to fly any boat instrument procedures including approaches so technically you're not really allowed to fly in IFR conditions a coupled instrument procedure with this true track autopilot other limitation is that you cannot have the autopilot engaged below 700 feet above ground level in any conditions Oh having said that the autopilot still does have the functionality apply a couple del PV approach it does not fly any it will not couple to any analog signals like ILS or VOR gott my approach loaded in the avid I'm 540 and I'm going to go ahead and call up Joshu approach and let them know where I am and get clearance for this VFR practice approach Josh approach jerky 6 3 1 Bravo whiskey VFR request [Applause] yeah just put Cherokee 61 Bravo whiskey's a Papa alpha 3 2 / golf / El Mirage dry lakebed at 7500 just want to do a VFR practice approach GPS approach it to Apple Valley direct Nastia about above 7000 the approach crew thanks for seven I've got five miles to go for nasty so I press alt or adjust my mat 500 feet per minute is fine so don't push him set again looks like the Waypoint is named Naste or paste I don't know I hope it's not too nasty every time you go into a new sector get handed off to a new air traffic controller you get a new barometer or setting you've got to go through the sync process I'm a true track again by pressing altitude twice and dialing in the same altitude that your e fist is showing up to you set the barometer on that all right we're approaching our 7,000 foot altitude all right we're here at 7,000 autopilot has levelled out for home after this Waypoint we can go down to six thousand three hundred so the autopilot is making a left turn here at Naste and we're gonna select altitude and we're gonna go down push the knob in rotate it to the left space here 6,300 set it and set the vertical speed up five hundred feet per minute down and I'll book my altitude all right we're approaching our altitude and it goes into altitude hold mode but this approach has a T arrival I'm not sure this one is technically a was a terminal area arrival terminal arrival area terminal at EAA it looks like a t and then there's no mo sector altitudes for the different quadrants of the approach but in any case it's like a t where these turns are totally right angle and you'll see this autopilot flying and GPSS mode anticipate the turns the Abidine will tell it to anticipated round off the corner these turns so it doesn't over shoot the final approach course all right coming up here on Curel waypoint we are going to make this right turn still holding six thousand three hundred and we're gonna go down to six thousand well I'm gonna select thousand and it doesn't start descending until I push this in so we're making the turn so I push it in 400 feet per minute make that 500 feet per minute every time you push it in the center knob cursor will move I'm gonna make this climb rate per minute all right we're at 6,000 here and we have two miles before head jury we're gonna make this right turn you're gonna see this autopilot is gonna turn the rounded off corner here the death Dyan is drawing now we're gonna descent down to 5,800 when we make this turn all right we're making the turn press altitude push the button in turn the knob twice over and push twice we're descending down to five thousand eight hundred and making the right turn rounding a corner here you can see it kind of cuts the corner right now the autopilots gone into glideslope arm because we're holding at the proper altitude before the final approach fix so we have to be at the proper altitude at 5,800 in this case but in altitude hold mode or vertical speed zero mode at the right altitude for the final approach fix for the true track to go into glide slope our mode squad could be a fire change sequence today I brought with me but we can see our glideslope coming in here on HDX there and we've got our minimum set to 30 380 on my altitude bug is set to 4,100 that's when I'm gonna disconnect the autopilot oh the glide slope is armed we're coming up on the final approach fix and I make the turn to the right waiting for it to couple I were coupled now we're gonna power back well we could descend so right now the autopilot is following the glide slope down keeping that needle centered I'm just managing power and trim energy by airspeed you can see it's right on I don't like that big like their course stay for one a Napa Valley ride on my slope Napa Valley traffic church's picture you want probable excuse about five to the north and found on their GPS practice approach straight in for one eight Apple Valley looking good it's really holding this glide slope well I'm holding the needle centered speeds looking good all that's looking good approaching altitude approaching by disconnected altitude and that's 4100 I disconnect that's 700 feet above the ground traffic turkey six for you I brought whiskey's on final straight in around what you want eight apples out the glideslope approaching minimums approaching are better box five hundred top without traffic sugar six you want brought whiskey short final around way one eight Apple Valley minimum well we're a bit of ohms it's the runway some of the things I like about the true track autopilot it does a good job of holding the track and getting to the altitude and leveling off if you assistant anticipated with power the interface is pretty easy to understand it's not terribly confusing or anything pretty easy to get the hang of it I really like the core control wheel steering feature the emergency level button all the features are pretty good overall I think it just represents a really good value for somebody looking to install a basic to access autopilot it to the airplane because it's not called because it's not authorized for a couple of instrument approaches I don't think it's for somebody who's you know into like heavy IFR flying or somebody who's really eyeing the GFC 500 that has less restrictions on it the lack of the IAS mode is one of the negatives but you know I think those two things are the big negatives overall I think it's a really great value I've been really enjoying using it I flipped the autopilot source select switch over to the dine on HDX the HDX will send the bugs over to the true track and the true track will follow the bugs I already made a video on it so here's the other video pop it up here you can go check that one out if you're interested in that mode otherwise in the future I'll be making some scenario-based videos on the finer points of using the true track autopilot so click Subscribe click the bell if you like this video click like let me know that you liked it I really hope that you found it useful come get in the loop on everything on the future videos and until next time thanks for coming along on the journey with me [Music]

Channel: SoCal Flying Monkey

Views: 73,778

Rating: 4.7728238 out of 5

Keywords: trutrak, trutrak autopilot, trutrak vizion autopilot, trutrak autopilot installation, trutrak autopilot video, trutrak autopilot reviews, trutrak certified autopilot, trutrak pma vizion, bendixking aerocruze 100, bendixking aerocruze, trutrak in a cherokee, cheap certified autopilot, best piper autopilot, piper cherokee autopilot, cessna 172 autopilot, trutrak autopilot tutorial, certified autopilot, trutrak tutorial, trutrak vizion tutorial, how to use trutrak

Id: KqXGYRVz9ok

Length: 27min 37sec (1657 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Every time someone mentions Trutrak, I just picture William H. Macy in Fargo.

[u/SoCalFlyingMonkey]

I’m excited to be able to share what I’ve learned about the Trutrak Vizion Autopilot (BendixKing Aerocruze 100) after flying with it for 6 months. If you are thinking about an autopilot upgrade I hope you find this video both useful and entertaining. I show most of the features (and some limitations) in a full review and tutorial in flight and on an LPV approach. Enjoy!!!

[u/livinthedreamz]

Being you have a PA32, the AP cost like $5K, does this include the servo's? How much was the installation of it and did you already have an AP system with the servo's? Is there trim included as a function with this AP?

Can.... Your panel control the servos, aka be an AP itself?

It seems that a panel should be able to handle the AP, the Coms and the transponder all in one but I see the companies piece meal the systems together and of course increase the cost thereof.

I've been told that the GRT panel can handle the AP internally and didn't know if your beautiful panel could do the same?