Garmin today announced a major upgrade to its G1000 integrated flight deck—the G1000 NXi (next generation)—with faster processors, map overlay on the horizontal situation indicator (HSI), Flight Stream 510 capability, improved ADS-B options and new visual approaches in the procedures menu. The G1000 NXi is already STC’d on the King Air 200 and the 300/350 will be added shortly. The system saves about 250 pounds when replacing original avionics. Owners of existing G1000 King Air flight decks will be able to upgrade to the NXi system as the displays have the same footprint and connectors.
The G1000 flight deck is now nearly 14 years old and more than 16,000 of the systems are currently flying. While the NXi upgrade doesn’t change the pilot interface—no touchscreens or keyboard controller is available in the King Air installation—the system’s new displays add LED backlighting and the faster processors speed up initialization time and allow faster map rendering and smoother panning. The LED backlighting reduces power consumption, increases display brightness and improves dimming. The new displays support advanced Doppler weather radar features such as optional ground clutter suppression and turbulence detection. A new ADAHRS simplifies installations.
The new map overlay on the primary flight display (PFD) HSI was a highly requested improvement, according to Garmin, and supports display of Nexrad imagery (including animation), weather radar, ADS-B IN weather, SafeTaxi airport diagrams, traffic, terrain and other features. Terrain on the HSI map overlay and multifunction display (MFD) maps is now depicted with new three-color terrain shading, which uses green for 2,000 feet, yellow for 1,000 feet and red for 100 feet agl, respectively.
When the pilot tunes com frequencies, an ID field now shows the station ID and frequency type.
On the NXi MFD, a new feature is display of sectional and IFR low/high en route charts. The MFD will also allow overlaying animated Nexrad weather imagery. On the bottom of the MFD, pilots can switch on a vertical situation display, which includes a terrain profile based on the active flight plan. Another new feature is the ability to preview departure and arrival procedures on the MFD before loading and activating the procedure. Garmin’s SurfaceWatch runway monitoring technology is optional for NXi installations and upgrades.
A unique new feature is the addition of visual approaches to the NXi’s procedures menu. This is particularly useful when a pilot is cleared to land at an unfamiliar airport or in reduced visibility but VFR conditions. When selecting the visual approach for a particular runway, the pilot can set customized minimums and vectors or straight-in for the intercept. The visual approach uses a three-degree glideslope, and it can be flown coupled to the autopilot.
The NXi flight deck offers optional installation of Garmin’s Flight Stream 510 Connext wireless cockpit connectivity system, which is housed in an SD-sized MMS card that plugs into a slot in the front of the MFD. This eliminates the need to install a separate Flight Stream device elsewhere. Flight Stream 510 supports two-way flight plan transfer and sharing of traffic, weather, GPS information, backup attitude information and so on between NXi avionics and the Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight Mobile apps. Flight Stream 510 also enables Garmin’s Database Concierge for loading avionics databases via Garmin Pilot.
