SA Flyer — Edition 263 — September 2017

12 SA Flyer Magazine

Gadget of the Month...............

GARMIN’S NEW

RETROFIT AUTOPILOT

Graeme Wuth

The avionic capabilities of

new personal aircraft rival

those seen in the airline

heavies. Owners of older,

recreational aircraft don’t

want to get left behind,

so Garmin has announced

the budget-based GFC

retrofit autopilot which

has almost all

the capabilities

of Garmin’s

immensely

capable and far

more expensive

GFC70 0.

T

HE GFC

comes from

Garmin’s

experimental

avionics line – it

will, however, have

STC approval – and is built around

Garmin’s recently introduced G

electronic flight instrument, a mini

EFIS and certified replacement

for your aircraft’s AH or DI. The G

has an onscreen autopilot mode

annunciation and cross-checks the

autopilot’s own self-contained roll and

pitch sensors. The G5 can be used for

data input and for arming the altitude

preselect, setting the heading bug, vertical

speed and target airspeeds, plus it displays

autopilot flight director command bars.

The GFC500 can be expanded with

optional automatic electric pitch trim, which

requires the installation of an additional

trim servo, but installations on lighter and

more basic airframes will make use of the

system’s standard trim prompting, where

the system prompts the pilot to manually

trim the aircraft. This saves installation time,

cost and complexity.

The GFC500 dedicated autopilot mode

controller, to be mounted on the radio

stack, has a control wheel for setting pitch,

airspeed and

vertical speed. It comes

with envelope protection, which includes

a level button that returns the aircraft to

straight-and-level flight if the pilot loses

control.

Furthermore, the GFC500 has full

instrument approach coupling when

interfaced with compatible GPS and VHF

nav radios, including raw nav (VOR/

LOC and ILS) and has GPS LNAV/VNAV

glideslope capturing. There’s also an

external go-around button that commands

the flight director on the G5 to display the

appropriate pitch attitude required for flying

the missed approach procedure, and it

automatically

activates a loaded

missed approach

when paired with a

Garmin GTN 650/750 GPS

navigator.

Garmin says the initial STC for the

GFC500 is expected to be completed on

the Cessna 172 in the fourth quarter of 2017

and STC approval for the Cessna 182 and

Piper PA-28 models will follow. The GFC

is priced at US$6995 on its own, but the

total system price, which includes the G

instrument, will be around US$10,000,

before installation.

Finally the clunky and heavy old

analogue autopilots in most reasonably

equipped GA aircraft can be replaced with

much more capable, accurate and lighter,

digital equipment.

Contact your nearest Garmin dealer for

more information.j

ABOVE - GFC500 autopilot

controller integrates with

Gamin's G5 mini EFIS and fits

in the radio stack.

LEFT - G5 with autopilot

annunciation. Trim inputs are

suggested to the pilot to reduce

installation complexity.