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You'd be even more impressed if you saw just how little resources they have to use (ram, storage, cpu), or how old of a C standard they have to work with. I have a few friends that work on this.
Seems like Java is popular at Garmin.
If only Biffle was in a King Air. Awesome to see stuff like this. Light sport aircraft have parachutes. Cool to see safety being incorporated into the avionics and not just flying it, but getting her down safely.
If only Biffle was in a King Air. Awesome to see stuff like this. Light sport aircraft have parachutes. Cool to see safety being incorporated into the avionics and not just flying it, but getting her down safely.
This is one of my biggest frustrations with aviation— the certification required to get this done is hugely onerous. The whole basis of certified aircraft is that they may not change, which makes improvements like airframe parachutes, auto land systems, and even terrain awareness, engine monitoring, etc. very costly to obtain. I think there is an argument to be made that there should be a pathway to airframe recertif…
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The only complaint is it uses phonetics for everything multiple times in each transmission, I'm a radio guy, I would use phonetics once, then otherwise spelled out letters - aka, "whiskey lima foxtrot" and WLF the next time I needed to say it.
This is not how communication is done in aviation. Instead, it’s common to abbreviate to the last three alphanumerics of tail numbers (so “niner alpha bravo” for N789AB) after the first call — but this is conditional on not having a potentially confusing other aircraft on frequency (N129AB), and the system here can’t reasonably know that, so must take the conservative option.
Garmin really is setting a standard for modern engineering. Hard to think of another company that still has solid engineering for both consumer and industrial applications.
The hardware side is routinely impressive. The software and business sides leave a lot to be desired.
I have a Garmin "smart" watch (with every app notification etc disabled) and I love the fact that I can do almost two weeks of exercises (ride, walk, gym) without needing to charge it. The bike computers are also solid. But sadly the UX of the software on these leaves a bunch to be desired, and I've been bitten by many software and firmware bugs in the last years... Including months for which HRM would randomly and persistently drop it's value from say whatever the real value (say 145 for argument sake) to 80.
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When did that happen? I recall the Air France crash over the Atlantic where the pilots got disoriented. And many others, like JFKjr's crash.
What does the AF 449 crash have to do with the existence of a button to return the aircraft to wings level + zero vertical speed? To answer your question though, LVL has been around for close to two decades now. IIRC there was a Cirrus/Garmin partnership that added it to the latter's G1000/GFC 700 and it's since trickled out to other consumer-grade autopilots.
If the captain could figure it out, so could the computer.
I recall another crash, not so long ago, of a commuter plane where the wings iced up a bit and the airplane stalled. The crew kept trying to pull the nose up, all the way to the ground. They could have recovered if they pushed the stick forward - failing basic stall recovery training.
There are many others - I've watched every episode of Aviation Disasters. Crew getting spatially disoriented is a common cause of crashes.
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When did that happen? I recall the Air France crash over the Atlantic where the pilots got disoriented. And many others, like JFKjr's crash.
IIRC, they were dealing with frozen pitot tubes or other sensors that were keeping the air data computing hardware from getting valid input. An automated "Get me out of trouble" button might have had the opposite effect.
BTW, my dad taught instrument flying in the AF. He said it was simple - look at the instruments. Bring the wings level, then the pitch level. Although simple, your body screams at you that it's wrong.
He carried with him a steel pipe, so he could beat a student unconscious who panicked and would not let go of the controls. This was against regulation, but he wasn't going to let a student pilot kill him.
When JFKjr's crash was on the evening news, he said two words - "spacial disorientation". Months later, that was the official cause.
Absolutely amazing. Well done, Garmin. Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives. Fantastic systems engineering work.
“ Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives.” I work on medical devices that improve and save lives but the work actually kind of sucks. You spend most of your time on documentation and develop with outdated tools. It’s important work but I would much prefer “move fast and break things”. So much more interesting.