There's a terrific new piece of avionics out dominating the market these days. Garmin has taken over the general aviation cockpit, and transformed it into a spaceliner flight deck.
There's only one hitch of course......it's complex and takes a good deal of time and energy to learn. But the rewards are fantastic, I'm told, though it's just now that I'm beginning to buckle/knuckle down and apply myself to the task of actually learning it instead of just talking about it.
The company I'm lucky enough to work for has developed a course to bring pilots at lightning speed into the twenty-first century, and today I attended the first day of a two day ground school. Given that I'm just a low-time VFR pilot, I'm intimidated, even though, of the class of five, there's three of us working on our instrument ratings and two high-time pilots who fly turbine powered heavy iron.
Tomorrow is the real test, where we put into place what we learned today, which was basically a familiarization tour of the two screens.....it was functionally just learning button-pushing. But tomorrow? It's all about real-world IFR experience, how to use the fabulous capabilities of this toy to actually get somewhere when the weather's a challenge.
Can't wait. It turns out that I'll be one of the first people at our flight school and even one of the first people in the nation to take a full instrument rating on the G1000. It's going to be an accomplishment to be proud of, ranking right there with my tailwheel endorsement and what I hope to have some day which would be an aerobatics capability....
More of course to follow, but now, to bed....
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