ESP, Perspective update, and ADS-B Out

I had the plane in the shop recently.  The goals were three-fold: Update the G1000 software, install the ESP feature, and install an ADS-B Out transponder.

The first two went OK, unfortunately, the latter not so much.

But let's start with the Garmin update.  I was running version 08 previously, and this upgrade brought it up to version 15.  There's various bug fixes etc in that update, but here's some of the more noticeable changes, all of which I think are nice little improvements.
  • Terrain profile - you can now view a side-view representation of the terrain in front of you just under the Map.  Handy for mountain operations.  I noticed it only shows terrain within a few thousand feet of you, so it's boring at good cruise altitudes, but that makes sense from a design point of view, no reason to show terrain when its not a concern.
  • ETE on PFD - the PFD used to showing bearing to next waypoint, which had little value for me and couldn't be changed.  This update changed that to be ETE (estimated time enroute) which is much more useful.
  • Mute button for XM - the XM radio interface has a slight change to make muting the audio a little faster, though there were already a few good ways to do that quickly.  As part of the updates the shop did for me, they turned up the max volume of the XM system a good bit.  It went from being barely audible at max volume to plenty loud at 50% - just where I wanted it!
  • Chart loading for taxi diagrams, etc. seems better, it used to fail/hang on first attempted chart viewing of a flight
  • METAR shown in Flight Plan page - now when you are scrolling through the airports in your active flight plan it shows the latest METAR weather observation.  It's in raw, encoded form but still a nice addition.
  • METAR age - back in version 08 you had to do a bit of work to determine the age of METAR reports, they fixed that in this update which is important, as I'd argue the age of a METAR is the most important part of it.
  • Vertical fuel flow bar - the indication of fuel flow changed to a vertical bar.  I think they did this to make room for showing fuel level on airplanes that support that, but it's a nice change even still.  The vertical bar better matches the motion you make with the mixture lever to make adjustments and it also stands out from the other bars more obviously, allowing your eye to find the data you want just a bit faster.

Beyond the software update, they also turned on a software feature called ESP.  ESP stands for Electronic Stability and Protection.  It basically works when the autopilot is turned off to help make your more aware of unusual flight attitudes.  For instance, if you get too slow, it will push the nose down and give your force feedback that you need to speed up.  It similarly will work to reduce bank angle if you've managed to get into a very steep turn.  Garmin has a nice write up on that here.

And lastly they swapped out my transponder for an ADS-B equipped version.  This ended up "grounding" the plane for a number of weeks.  

The reason was that, once installed, the "suppression bus" (used to allow radios in the plane to mark that they are currently broadcasting/receiving, so other radios can wait their turn) showed a bad signal.  The bad signal coming from the Avidyne traffic system - instead of an on/off voltage, it was a crazy wave of "random" on/offs.  

We never did resolve that issue.  Avidyne's MX manuals say to test the transponder with the traffic system disabled, so they said "that's how you fix this".  Hmm.  Garmin's manuals said all systems had to be running, so it counteracted the Avidyne one.  

Since I picked up the plane a few weeks ago, we have found that at least one other Cirrus in the field has this exact issue and likely had it since it was built at the factory.  When I flew the airplane everything seemed fine with the transponder, but I hope to give the ADS-B Out signal a better test on my next flight to see if that part is working. 

Next steps are unknown, which is pretty frustrating, but at least the plane is perfectly fine as far as I, being the pilot, can tell, so that's what's important.  

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