Fresh on the heels of its tour de force announcement at the Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA) show in Reno last week of the GTN 750 and GTN 650 panel-mount touch-screen navigators, Garmin released details at the show of its G2000 flat-panel touch-controlled avionics suite. The package will be installed at the factory in new airplanes. Cessna announced on Monday night that its updated Corvalis TTx would feature G2000. Like the G3000 (for light jets — Honda Jet and Piper Altaire) and the G5000 (for Part 25 jets — Cessna Citation Ten), the G2000 features not touch screens per se but a touch-screen controller that the pilot uses to move the cursor around the screen and make selections. We tried the system in Garmin’s human factors lab last month and were impressed by the ease of use of the controller but more so by the ingenious software design that boasts an extremely shallow menu system, so no feature is more than a couple of touches away.
Garmin’s aftermarket product manager Jim Alpiser told member of the press that the company had taken orders for its GTN products at AEA in Reno “numbering in the hundreds,” making it an impressive launch. GTN is already FAA certified and Garmin is already delivering units. While the GTN navigators are de facto replacements for the GNS 430 and GNS 530 navigators, Alpiser said the different tray mounts require “some installation.” He did say that existing WAAS antennas for Garmin navigators could be used as is for the GTN products.
