Chippy Can Now Fly in the Clouds!

The photos in the scuzzy weather are past experiences of flying under low cloud layers. It’s all good until there’s mountains about! Don’t want to do this anymore.

So now we’ve done two practice flights (in bright blue skies) with a new Garmin avionics upgrade, just completed and tested this week. Chippy and I shot a variety of GPS approaches into local airports. Yesterday we flew 3 LPV or LNAV precision approaches (yes, while keeping a traffic lookout!). Today we shot a practice glide slope approach (LNAV+V) into Easton MD for a touch and go landing on 15, then flew up to the practice box 7 miles north to fly aerobatics, then we flew another instrument approach back into home base at Lee Annapolis.

Turns out Chippy flies approaches nicely at 120 kts, but if it’s really scuzzy weather and I want to slow the action, it’ll fly like a Piper Arrow at 80 and full flaps. Same power settings and almost as stable.

What we learned: the GPS loses the satellites when you go inverted! It takes a long time to come back. So we won’t be flying any inverted instrument approaches, dang it.

Thanks to Gulf Coast Avionics for making me a wiring harness which is just a thing of beauty, to connect it all together as part of an OshKosh deal! Then sticking with me through lots of phone calls and emails while I figured out the configuration settings so all the boxes talk to each other. Thanks for all the help, Levi Vickers, Robert Locke and Sarah Smith!

https://www.gulfcoastavionics.com

Garmin has come out with some amazing stuff recently, for a fraction of the price and panel space once required. Equipment I installed: GNX 375 combined GPS and transponder (WAAS and ADSB in/out), GAD 29C network box, GAD 13 OAT sensor, and GMU 11 magnetometer. I already had a Garmin G5 that now provides a PFD or HSI with lots of new info feeding it.

I figure I’ll shoot an approach on the way to and from the aerobatics area every time, to practice with it. It takes a minute to mentally shift gears from instrument flying (smooth and gentle) to pulling to a vertical roll then into a flat spin!