Cessna 340 with Glass Primary Flight Display and Autopilot Integration

While at Maxcraft we consider our consultation process to be a strong selling point, in truth, it’s not always entirely necessary. The savvy owner of this Cessna 340 already had considerable education with regards to his avionics upgrade options. He knew more or less exactly what he wanted and neither our sales nor technical staff could find much fault in his choices. He asked for a Garmin G500 primary flight display, and that’s exactly what our technicians installed.

The Garmin G500 PFD is the most common primary flight display that we install here at Maxcraft, and is most appropriate to GA aircraft of this size. It provides a wealth of information right at the pilot’s fingertips. In addition to the G500, Maxcraft installed a Garmin GAD43 which was necessary for the integration of the aircraft’s older attitude-based autopilot with the newer Garmin G500. The GAD43 is essentially a digital to analog converter. Because this aircraft’s autopilot system was designed to work with a traditional mechanical attitude gyro, it could only accept attitude data as an analog signal. The problem of course, was that the mechanical attitude indicator which it relied upon (an old Bendix/King KI256) had just been removed and replaced with a Garmin G500. In order for the autopilot to function with digital attitude data from G500, it required that digital data be converted to analog first — which is where the GAD43 came in. While the KI256 could have been re-installed in a different location, digital attitude data sidesteps all of the maintenance costs and reliability headaches associated with gyroscopes. This, by extension, ensures that the autopilot will never again be made unusable or unsafe by a faulty gyro. With zero wobble in attitude data, the autopilot now feels like it flies on rails.

 

Maxcraft was initially selected for this upgrade based on positive word-of-mouth, as well as our publicly-documented previous experience with the Cessna 340 (as well as other pressurized twins) here on on website. Based on this information, our client flew in from Spring Bank, Alberta to see our operation for himself. Not long after his visit and short facility tour, he and our staff were able to hammer out the details of this upgrade and book the hangar for his avionics upgrade.

Summary of Installed Equipment

• GAD-43 Adapter
• Garmin 500 Primary Flight Display System