Looking through the glass

The Garmin G1000

Cockpits have come along way since the humble ’turn and bank’ indicator and alcohol-filled P8 compass of a Tiger Moth.
Just as the silicon chip revolution took the computer from a giant shrine to a hand held brain, avionics that were once constrained to the flight levels are now found amongst the weeds in light aircraft. And in the case of the Garmin G1000, some of those in the flight levels are looking on with envy.

A New Age

The future of flight instrumentation was probably sealed when the first person decided to paint the upper half of an attitude indicator blue. The old black and white ‘A.I.’ sufficed, but how could the three dimensions of the sky be better represented to a slightly evolved primate out of his environment? The challenge to further unburden the task of instrument flight has since evolved hand-in-hand with the exponential growth of technology.