This is what's often called a glass cockpit - modern interactive screens powered by computers
allowing the pilot to control the aircraft through digital inputs rather than through
traditional knobs and switches and... This is my Cirrus SR-22 I'm very fortunate to own it but I'm
often asked when I share my flying here on YouTube what the screens actually do. Just a quick warning
this is going to be a bit of a nerdy video but I'm going to get into the details of what everything
in this cockpit actually does how I control this aircraft when I'm flying in have I gone
overboard with the amount of technology that I've put in this aircraft never never [Music]
starting on the left this is an iPad Mini 6 just a standard iPad it's mounted on a little suction
cup mount on the window there and it's running an application called Garmin pilot the reason I use
Garmin pilot is because it does interface with the other avionics but we'll come to that in a
second what I primarily use this iPad for is map so I know exactly where I am when I'm flying but
also all the charts that I'll require when I'm flying in and out of an airport this is also
where I have my checklist for everything that I need to do at different stages of flying the
aircraft plus it also doubles as my paper and Pen I just use the apple pencil here and I can
write notes down if I get instructions from Air Traffic Control moving from the iPad to the main
cockpit these are two Garmin G500 TXI screens and they're set up in two different modes this is a
PFD and this is an MFD this is the primary flight display multi-function display one thing I should
mention is that I am a Garmin brand ambassador so I do work with Garmin on showcasing some of
their equipment I did purchase a lot of this equipment myself but Garmin also helped me out
with some other bits so do take everything that I say in this video with a tinge of bias but Garmin
don't know I'm making this video they didn't ask me to I'm not being paid for this this video is
in response to a lot of your questions on how the cockpit of echo Yankee Zulu Works after my recent
trip to East Timor so the primary flight display is all split into these two sections I've always
got all of my main flight information here and then on this second panel here I can basically set
it up to be or any of these options I can put the moving map like I had I can get a traffic display
which shows me other aircraft around me terrain display which shows me any high or low terrain but
because I'm in the hangar everything is terrain at the moment I can view my charts on here as
well on the MF D I actually have a bonus panel got my engine instruments which always appear
here but I also generally put my engine page here which gives me more information and then I've got
another panel over here which again I can choose the map I can choose the traffic page my personal
preference for a setup is basically what's the aircraft doing whereabouts am I what's the engine
doing more detail on what the engine is doing and then well bonus content if I could have Netflix
on there that would just be underneath these two screens I have this unit this is a gi275 Again
by Garmin and this is a backup instrument for me and I can get all of my air speeds my altitude my
Artificial Horizon and other bits of information that I might need when I'm flying as well like a
moving map plus some backup data that would have appeared on these screens but if these
have gone blank I can rely on this one and then coming down what we call the central panel this
is the comms unit this allows me to select which radios I'm speaking to anybody on and these are
my two Garmin gtn 650s now these are what I use for navigating and I'll show you how that works
in a second and just below the two gtn 650s this is my autopilot the panel G500 g275 gtns
it all sounds quite confusing at first but like everything in life I like to simplify my flying
and I like to divide everything into three main categories some of the avionics are for
monitoring some are for navigating and some are for manipulating or flying the aircraft monitoring
covers things like my air speed so how fast the aircraft is going the altitude exactly how high
I'm flying the track that I'm flying on at the moment navigating is done through the gtn 650
devices and this is where I put in airports that I'm flying from airports that I might be flying
to this information is then pushed to the G500 so whatever I put into my flight plan I can then see
presented to me on a moving map here on my primary flight display as well and then there are some
ways as well to manipulate or fly the aircraft for example I can change the aircraft heading
using the avionics and if I engage the autopilot you can see it will actually steer the aircraft
one of the first things you want to do before you go flying is obviously load a flight plan
you want to know where you're going and the avionics needs to know that as well let's say
for example we're flying from my home airport here which is moorabbin and we're just going
to do a local flight and we're going to go to Avalon for example once it's loaded onto the
iPad the way that you actually send it across to the navigation units is via Bluetooth so I
just click on the little Bluetooth icon at the top I can go send to and then here on the unit
I'll get a message saying that there's a flight plan available and instantly you can see there's
the same route from moorabbin to Avalon you can see it comes up on the primary flight display
movie map as well now it says no GPS position because I'm obviously inside at the moment but
in one two three clicks it's basically up here and the aircraft can now follow this line This
is the magenta line that shows me basically which way to steer if I want to follow this path now
even though the cockpit is fully digital the way that it gets the data from the outside world to
present on those computer screens often comes from an analog input take for example the pedo
tube which sits underneath the wing now the air that flows into this pedo tube even the pressure
that it creates inside this little cylinder combined with a few other bits of information
basically is what gives me the airspeed indication on the computer screens and if you ever wondered
why we put these little socks on these pillow tubes it's to actually start the insects and
bugs and debris getting inside that pedo tube and blocking it that's why we have the socks
another analog instrument that provides input to the digital screens is this this
is the static paw the static fan this lets the aircraft know what the outside air pressure is
and it helps the aircraft understand what altitude it's flying out [Music]
and then under the right wing here I have these two analog temperature probe this is what helps
the aircraft understand what the outside air temperature is outside the aircraft that's
why it's the outside Heritage please tell me what the temperature is so you might be thinking well
that's all well and good you know fancy electrical cockpit that does all these fancy electrical
things but what happens if the power fails well there's really good electrical redundancy in this
aircraft it actually has two separate batteries and two separate alternators now without getting
too in-depth into the electrical system and it does vary between older versions of the Cirrus
SR-22 which mine is a newer version but the basic principle is the same if one of the alternators
fail then generally the other one can take on board some or all of the responsibilities of
the first one if it can't take on board all of the responsibilities then you can actually start
turning off certain non-critical items for example in this aircraft if one of my alternators fail one
of the first things I do is just turn the lights off the landing lights the nav lights the strobe
lights they actually draw quite a lot of current from the aircraft by turning all those items off
I can actually make the battery last a lot longer it starts to get a bit complex when you look into
the electrical system but if you basically think of this there's an alternator that drives the
electrical components and if that fails there's a battery backup that will still drive those
electrical components now is actually have two sets of those so two alternators two batteries so
a lot of things would have to fail for everything to go dark in the aircraft and if everything does
go dark in the aircraft remember that standby instrument that's inside that I showed you before
this clever little item here let me actually show you if I turn all the batteries off this stays
on if I hit stay on now this actually has its own independent source of power it has its own battery
that sits behind it so everything can go dark and yet I'll still have my airspeed indicator
my altitude my Artificial Horizon mapping tools navigation tools there is a lot of redundancy
built into this very smart but very very tiny little bit of Kit in fact this is probably one
of the most important screens in the aircraft now it's one thing to understand how the modern glass
cockpit works it's another thing entirely if you want to watch me using it in flight so check out
this video of me flying this aircraft across the continent of Australia in a single day using these
aircraft avionics to make the whole trip easier otherwise if you've already watched that you might
be interested in this video down here but thanks as always for watching I'll see in the next video