Moving from Garmin GNC300/SL30 to GTN650/GTR200 part 1

Well, the "Need" to have a WAAS GPS and 2020 compliant panel pushed me over center and I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade all the COM/NAV capabilities in my 8.

I had a nicely equipped IFR panel that had almost everything but a Certified WAAS GPS. I could do ILS/LOC, VOR and GPS approaches, but not the LPV's that are replacing the old ILS systems. Also, I have ADSB out, but it wasn't compliant since I didn't have a certified WAAS signal to feed my position.

This is what I started out with.



To start the process I got on the horn with Stein and resupplied his .02 cent supply. I also had a panel blank shipped to him so he could have his guys cut it out and I knew if I gave him the proper placement I wanted, the dimensions of the cutouts would be correct. Here's what I got in the box from him.



To start the actual project I removed the existing panel and equipment and started tracing wires. I am using the Approach Faststack hub system so mainly I have to change the cables they provided and reattach the power/ground/lighting wires. Still, once I undid all the cable wraps it looked like someone threw a hand grenade into a spaghetti bowl.



After removing Cable ties



While I was figuring out the wiring situation, James Clark was busy fabricating a plate to put over the hole that was cut out of the panel to accomodate the new GRT Mini B that is forthcoming. I put the venerable Dynon D10A back in this spot until the Mini is shipped towards the end of this year. James made the plate to fit the #4 nutplates required for the mini B so when it comes it'll be easier to install.



Next I had to rebuild my radio racks to take the old out and put the new in. Once I mocked these up we placed them in the cutout of the new panel and they fit perfectly. Thanks Stein and CAD..



I just had to have a peek at what it was all going to look like, call it a test fit..



Continued in Part 2.

Moving from Garmin GNC300/SL30 to GTN650/GTR200 part 2

Continuing with the install..

Once the panel blank was prepped and all the required holes were drilled we mocked everything up to see if it all would fit.



Now I had to get back to work on the wiring side of things. Using the hub system made it go quickly. I had to pull all the existing power and ground wires from the blocks and mount the backplates to the radio racks. Then we mounted the complete set of racks and cables in the plane so I could start running wires.



Another couple hours connecting wires to power and ground blocks and connecting plugs to the Faststack Hub and I could start tidy'ing things up.



Now was the big moment. Would all the smoke stay in the wires? Slid all the components in and powered up individually and everything appeared to work.



Now it was time to install the panel which I painted the night before and all the Wrinkle paint was properly wrinkled. Had to drill a few holes to mount the D1 and position all the cables and hook up all the antenna's. Speaking of antennas, James made a nice mount so I could put the GPS antenna under the cowl and not have to run new RG400 all the way to the rear deck where the old GNC300 antennae was. I hate running wires to the back of the plane..

Everything fit perfectly!




Now it was time for someone that knew how to talk all the 232/NMEA/ARINC language that makes all this stuff talk to each otherto do their magic. James.. get in here.

After trying all the radio's xmit and receive and tuning NAV stations we started to see if we could get everything to work together.

I had the old system tweaked perfectly. Everything on everything worked great. Getting the 650 setup to talk to the HXr and the XPDR was just time consuming. GRT has a nice supplement explaining the setups for both items. The wiring diagram that I got from Tim Haas at Faststack laid it all out in plain English to James and his fingers danced over the buttons faster that I could watch and ... like magic, magenta lines drew, courses appeared and numbers spun in the ARINC counters in the HXr..



Now, everything is mostly rosie..

There were a couple surprises and they both came from Garmin. With the SL30 I could remote tune and switch and monitor freq's in the HXr and switch back and forth. Both COM and NAV. Not so with the GTN650. Evidently, it doesn't transmit out the info that GRT needs to read what's going on in the radio so I lost my ability to remotely switch the freq's in the 650. Same for the 200. It will receive 232 data from the HXr so I can set the freq and send it to the GTR200, but it doesn't xmit the required data out back to the HXr.
This is no biggie, just a disappointment that I lost a really nice feature of the GRT equipment in an upgrade.

The HXr won't display all the neat features the 650 shows such as holding patterns and early turn points at course changes. Again, not a big deal, just would be nice to see on the big screen.

All in all, I excited to be flying behind a state of the art panel in my Home Built airplane.. amazing!

Color me a happy camper..



This was actually a weekend project. I arrived at the shop at noon last Thursday and we started working about 2 oclock that afternoon. I had spent a considerable amount of time planning and gathering parts. That paid off in the long run.. Also, having a well equipped place to work was a life saver. Ken Harrill's hangar is next door to James's and to say he's organized is a huge understatement. If I needed anything, Ken said, "here you go".. Thanks Ken.. many time over. 72 hours after I left Dahlonega for Columbia I landed back in Dahlonega with a fully functional panel ready for travel.

If anybody has any questions shoot them on and I'll be glad to tell you what I know and learned. Some of the setup was a little confusing with the Trig 31 but I got it all sorted out.

I'm ready for a long IFR trip. Just too bad it's icy between here and Austin. Delta, let's go!

Looks great Jerry...

GTR 200 Serial Out

RV8iator said:

Same for the 200. It will receive 232 data from the HXr so I can set the freq and send it to the GTR200, but it doesn't xmit the required data out back to the HXr.
This is no biggie, just a disappointment that I lost a really nice feature of the GRT equipment in an upgrade.

Click to expand...

Hello Jerry,

You might want to check your wiring because the GTR 200 does indeed transmit similar data to the SL40 out pin 23.

Refer to Appendix B in the GTR 200 installation manual for information regarding the serial data that is transmitted by the GTR 200.

You might also check that your GTR 200 has the latest software since we have made some minor improvements in the transmitted data. As you probably know, the software can be easily upgraded by the owner using the front mounted micro SD card slot.

Thank you for installing these Garmin products in your panel! Please contact us by phone or email if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Steve

Thanks Steve. Good info. Neither Tim, Ben nor I found that little tidbit.

Glad to see everything worked out well?..

Looks great Jerry!

Good to see you again, Jerry. The panel looks great. My wife loves to go into Ken's hangar and move ONE thing to see if he notices! boxes all neatly labeled and stacked. Ugghhhh! Not mine. No sireee. Stop by again when you are near.

Hmmmm ....

g3xpert said:

Hello Jerry,

You might want to check your wiring because the GTR 200 does indeed transmit similar data to the SL40 out pin 23.

Refer to Appendix B in the GTR 200 installation manual for information regarding the serial data that is transmitted by the GTR 200.

You might also check that your GTR 200 has the latest software since we have made some minor improvements in the transmitted data. As you probably know, the software can be easily upgraded by the owner using the front mounted micro SD card slot.

Thank you for installing these Garmin products in your panel! Please contact us by phone or email if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Steve

Click to expand...

Thanks Steve.

We **assumed** that the 200 would understand "SL30/40-speak" and were surprised when others thought it didn't. I just read through the protocol and see that it's capable of "multi-dialog-speak-and-hear".

I **assumed** that the GTN 650 would have that "old" functionality as well.

Did we miss that somewhere????

James ... Widget's helper.

Awesome

All I can say is wow! Our panel is pretty much where yours was (GRT, SL30, GNC300, TT PP autopilot). It works great for now. I am interested in how your ADSB out will work, I assume a combination of the new wass GPS and the Trig Xponder??

BillFear said:

All I can say is wow! Our panel is pretty much where yours was (GRT, SL30, GNC300, TT PP autopilot). It works great for now. I am interested in how your ADSB out will work, I assume a combination of the new wass GPS and the Trig Xponder??

Click to expand...

Bill, the ADSB out works great now. I have the ADSB out format out of on 5 on the 650 to pin 3 on the Trig. Set the baud to 9600 and ADSB type to Garmin remote plus TIS on the Trig. The HXr had to be set to Garmin 330 instead of TT22 to work.

Jerry,

How do you like the Trig TT31? The price is nice, but I wonder if I would find the method of entering squawk codes (turn, push, turn, push, turn,...) a little awkward?

Bob

Jerry, We made many of the same upgrades to our 6. Slowly learning the EFIS and the 650. Does anyone know of a good program to teach the 650. I have the Ipad app for the 750 and manual but both are not providing me the learning experience I need or I am just slow.
We also have basically the same setup for ADSB. We are having some issues with intermittent traffic and weather. Suspecting its more of a FAA and ground station issue but wondered what your experience has been so far.

George

BobTurner said:

Jerry,

How do you like the Trig TT31? The price is nice, but I wonder if I would find the method of entering squawk codes (turn, push, turn, push, turn,...) a little awkward?

Bob

Click to expand...

Hi Bob, yeah it is a little cumbersome until you get used to it. Now I don't even think about it. I do like the trig products and support.

sailvi767 said:

Jerry, We made many of the same upgrades to our 6. Slowly learning the EFIS and the 650. Does anyone know of a good program to teach the 650. I have the Ipad app for the 750 and manual but both are not providing me the learning experience I need or I am just slow.
We also have basically the same setup for ADSB. We are having some issues with intermittent traffic and weather. Suspecting its more of a FAA and ground station issue but wondered what your experience has been so far.

George

Click to expand...

George, I'm using the GTN650 iPad simulator and it is a great help. I also bought the training manual from Pilot Workshops by John Dittmer. It's a compilation of the GArmin manual in a much more user friendly format. I put the printed book from Workshops next to my iPad with the simulator running and it's been a great help. However, I did have to pay the 24 bucks to activate the simulator and the book/PDF from Dittmer was 44 bucks so it's not the cheapest way to learn the system. It's a lot easier to plow through than the several hundred pages in the Garmin manual that came with the unit.
I do now know what every button push does as far as operating the 650. It's a really powerful tool when you see everything it does for you. I am very familiar with the 430 and this is a giant step up from that as far as usability goes. A lot of the functions are the same on both units as is a lot of the available information.

As for the ADSB, I'm using the Skyradar D2/Trig 31/650WAAS combo. I can see everything on my HXr and it works great. I don't notice any intermittency problems at all. I just seems to work like it's supposed to. I see a bunch of traffic all the time but have no way of knowing if it's really all of it. I can tell when I get the TIS traffic because it shows up as two targets over each other. Straight ADS traffic is single target. At least that's the way I'm understanding it. Maybe some of the ADS guru's will tell me if I wrong about that.