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Aviation History
2004
2004-09 - 2661.PDF
Cessna's 182 Sky lane is now available with a glass cockpit w ith more than 150,000 built, nothing could be a more familiar sight at the local air port than the high-wing Cessna piston single. So it is hardly surprising that the company stuck with what it knew when it resumed single- engined piston deliveries in 1997. Since then, Cessna has produced more than 4,500 Skyhawks, Skylanes and Stationairs. These aircraft sport new paint schemes and detail improvements, but they look just like their predecessors. The general aviation market has not stood still, however, and this time around Cessna's singles face stiff competition from designs offering new technology. Some of the biggest advances have been in the cockpit, and now Cessna has teamed with Garmin International to bring the lat est in general aviation flightdeck technol ogy to its piston singles. The availability of Garmin's G1000 all-glass integrated avion ics marks perhaps the most radical change yet to these long-running aircraft. Well known as a maker of GPS naviga tors, including the GNS 430 and 530 sys tems popular with general aviation pilots, Garmin set out to develop a complete inte grated avionics suite. Its G1000 was first certificated earlier this year in the Diamond DA42 and has also been selected for Beechcraft and Mooney pistons. Cessna not only offers the G1000 as an option across its single-piston product line, but will use the system in its Citation Mustang entry-level business jet. Clean design The instrument panel is the most visible change in the GlOOO-equipped Cessna sin gles. Gone are the traditional round-dial flight instruments and Honeywell Bendix/ King avionics stack. The G1000 panel fea tures two large LCD control display units (CDU), measuring 265mm (10.4in) diago nally. The displays are identical and have a resolution of 1,024 x 768 pixels. One acts as the primary flight display (PFD) and one as the multifunction display (MFD). Centred between the displays is a vertical digital audio panel that controls radio vol ume and intercom functions. Additionally, it is a marker beacon receiver and has a manual display reversion button should the automatic feature fail. Electrical system switches are to the left of the displays, while the entire right quarter of the panel is empty. The standby instruments, conven tional altimeter, airspeed and vacuum-dri ven attitude gyro, are located below the CDUs. The Bendix/King KAP 140 dual-axis autopilot controller is located below the standby instruments. An optional ADF will be available soon, its control panel mounted below the autopilot's. Most avionics boxes are no longer panel-mounted, they are racked in the aft fuselage. The heart of the system is a solid- state attitude and heading reference system (AHRS). This uses a unique three-dimen sional magnetometer and dual GPS units to determine attitude information. The AHRS initialises itself rapidly, and in-flight initialisation at bank angles up to 20° is possible. In addition to dual navigation and communication (nav/comm) radios, the G1000 has dual GPS receivers. 38 14-20 DECEMBER 2004 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.flightinternational.com
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