While much of the aviation industry remains in a holding pattern given the tough economic times, Garmin opened AirVenture with announcements of several new products and product enhancements designed to give pilots new options and to put the pressure on competitors in nearly every facet of general aviation.
• The GTS 800 series is a brand new lineup of three active traffic systems. They include the GTS 800, GTS 820 and GTS 850. All are fully TSO certified TAS and TCASI systems. The systems combine on-board active traffic and ADS-B target information to give greater accuracy and information about threat aircraft when paired with the appropriate Mode-S transponder.
• The G500 flat-panel PFD/MFD is a new offshoot of the G600. It offers a revolutionary price point of $15,995 and provides much of the functionality of the G600. Even new G600 features, namely SVT and GAD 43 (see below) are available as options on the G500.
• The GAD 43 is an adapter that allows G500 and G600 owners to use the ADHRS output from those units to drive the attitude input of many popular existing autopilots that previously required fragile and expensive-to-repair mechanical attitude indicators. There are tens of thousands of such autopilots on the market, which will make the G500/600 a very attractive upgrade option.
• And enhanced G600 that now offers Garmin’s synthetic vision product (SVT) along with GAD 43 as standard. G600 is also now approved for many larger, heavier and faster Class 3 airplanes. Current G600 customers get SVT upgrade for free, and a greatly reduced price on the GAD 43.
To find out more about these introductions, visit garmin.com.
