No Flight Mode Annuntiation in G500 ?

[jjkrijgsman]

Hi guys,

I am a new user of the G500 and bought it to use with the new A36 Bonanza as well as the G5´s. When using the glass cockpit in combination with the GFC500 autopilot I would expect to see FMA´s in the PFD of the G500, but there is none. Is this something that can be added somehow? 

I am happy with the G5´s that I use in the analog upgraded cockpit, which has FMA´s. Why is the G500 not picking this up?

Thanks for looking into this.

Joaquin

Edited February 14 by jjkrijgsman

[Coop]

The Garmin G500 (note, not the newer Garmin G500 TXi, which is an entirely different piece of avionics) does not have any autopilot mode indicators. It'll show the flight director, but the mode indication is something that would be indicated separately. Commonly G500 avionics equipped aircraft would either use a remote autopilot annunciator panel (GI 285 or similar) or an autopilot head unit that contains one bundled (such as the GMC605) -- or non Garmin APs such as Bendix-King or similar that have their own either internal or external mode annunciators. 

[cwjohan]

The G500 SYSTEM SETUP page has a PFD OPTIONS section, but does not include NAV STATUS - STYLE 1/STYLE 2 options.  Seems like a huge omission not to have it.  and it can be found in the real-life G500 Pilots Guide section 3.4.1.  Thus, it seems quite incorrect to say that the G500 doesn't have that feature.  It simply is not implemented by RealSimGear as far as I can tell.  But, surely, it should be implemented.  FAA regulations require the navigation status to be displayed in line of sight of the PFD.  It seems unreasonable to force a buyer of expensive glass avionics to install a clunky remote FMA unit.  How can we get this NAV STATUS option implemented (sometimes called the "Scorecard")?

I have seen an instance of a user of a real-life G500 state that he had the same option missing, but took it to the dealer who installed the option in a few minutes with an "option card" or something like that.

Edited 1 hour ago by cwjohan

[Cameron]

1 hour ago, cwjohan said:

The G500 SYSTEM SETUP page has a PFD OPTIONS section, but does not include NAV STATUS - STYLE 1/STYLE 2 options.  Seems like a huge omission not to have it.  and it can be found in the real-life G500 Pilots Guide section 3.4.1.  Thus, it seems quite incorrect to say that the G500 doesn't have that feature.  It simply is not implemented by RealSimGear as far as I can tell.  But, surely, it should be implemented.  FAA regulations require the navigation status to be displayed in line of sight of the PFD.  It seems unreasonable to force a buyer of expensive glass avionics to install a clunky remote FMA unit.  How can we get this NAV STATUS option implemented (sometimes called the "Scorecard")?

I have seen an instance of a user of a real-life G500 state that he had the same option missing, but took it to the dealer who installed the option in a few minutes with an "option card" or something like that.

An option card is just that...a non required option that Garmin will sell you to unlock a specific feature. But, what Coop said above is accurate. The FAA requires line of sight status indicators as part of an autopilot STC, so it does make sense the G500 did not ship with this by default. When the G500 was released, Garmin did not produce their own autopilot, so the assumption was the required line of sight items were already installed. That changed with the TXi when Garmin introduced their GFC line of autopilots.

There are no plans to bring this to sim.