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Garmin Smart Glide
by Joe Casey
In my 3-plus decades in aviation, there have been tremendous ad- vancements that have made f ly- ing both safer and better. When I
first learned to fly in 1990, I flew a straight-tail Cessna 172 with only a mostly-inoperative ADF for naviga- tion. We never used headsets, instead opting to shout across the cockpit and use the ceiling-mounted speaker and a hand mike to “talk outside” the aircraft. There was no autopilot at all in that Cessna 172 but, industry-wide in single-engine airplanes, it was a rarity to see any autopilot beyond a “wing leveler” or unreliable pseudo
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autopilot that was more of a hazard than a benefit. Times have changed. We’ve come a long way in avia- tion. Today, we not only have phe- nomenal noise-canceling headsets, but we have entire cabins that are noise canceled. We have GPS navi- gators that are incredibly intui- tive and ridiculously precise, and almost all have WAAS-enabling. Autoland, Underspeed Protection, Overspeed Protection, Autothrottles, and Envelope Protection all are safety features that were only dreamed of in my early years of flying. Indeed, noth- ing I flew in the military or airlines
PHOTOS COURTESY OF GARMIN
compared to what we have today in general aviation’s pressurized air- planes. In the old days, when refer- ring to a really nice GA panel, we’d say, “That airplane’s panel is almost like an airliner,” alluding to the fact that the airlines then had the “best of the best.” Today, most pressurized GA airplanes have far better avionics suites than any airliner.
Weirdly, the owner-flown pressur- ized community is leading the in- dustry in avionics advancements, far ahead of the military, airline, and even over the General Aviation jet commu- nity. We were flying PA46s, TBMs, and