The “Owner to Owner” panel was a favorite at last year’s CJP Convention in Austin, offering useful perspectives from actual Citation pilots and owners, mixed with a healthy dose of good humor. At CJP 2023, four other Citation operators joined panel organizer Brian Currier to share the pros and cons of the various avionics platforms on their aircraft.
Modelled around a standard preflight, Currier offered an enthusiastic description of the Garmin G1000 NXi in his Citation Mustang, which he noted draws very little power with the engines off. “You don’t actually need to be on a GPU to do a database update,” he said. “I pop out the old database card, insert the new one and power up. That’s it.
“Now we’re gonna go outside the airplane to the preflight,” he continued, “while the update takes about five minutes.” Currier did note one major exception to that timeframe, when uploading obstacles or the terrain databases, but “I don’t even remember the last time it was an update to that. They don’t build a lot of new mountains.”
CJP Legacy Committee Chair Endre Holen detailed the Garmin-enhanced panel of otherwise standard ‘steam gauges’ in his Citation V. “It’s very, very capable,” he said, “but what you don’t have is VNAV on the autopilot. You’ve got to roll the pitch wheel down every time you go down.”
Holen eagerly awaits a certified upgraded autopilot from Garmin. “When that happens, we’ll be pretty close to some of these platforms that we see here. [My Citation V] is a project and a process. It’s a labor of love, and it’s an incredible flying machine once you get up to altitude.”
Marc Dulude was effusive in his praise of the Garmin G3000 avionics in his CJ3+. “I just find it intuitive,” he said. “There’s just a whole pile of features that I think are absolutely fantastic,” including synthetic vision, controller pilot data link communications (CPDLC) and Safe Taxi airport diagrams.
“Everything is kind of presented to you just when you need it, and you know where you can go and find it,” Dulude added.
That’s not to say the other primary glass panel offering in the Citation family doesn’t have its merits. In a video presentation, CJP Chair Mitch Januszewski went through pre-flight startup and flight plan input on the Pro Line 21 suite in his CJ1+. “Once you know the Pro Line 21, you’ll love it,” he said. “It’s an engineer’s dream, and a very logical, very powerful system. But it’s not [as] intuitive.”
“I very much love the [Collins Aerospace] Pro Line 21,” added Randy Broiles, who filled in for Januszewski on the panel. “I have about 1300 flying hours in Pro Line 21-equipped CJ1+, CJ2+ and CJ3s, plus I have about another 50 hours in the CJ4.”
Regardless of the specific equipment, Currier noted it’s understandable if Citation pilots feel a bit dazed by what their panels can do. “The advancements we have in platforms have really gone from being very, very simple, very logical … into a multitude of logical advancements,” he said. “We’re moving into Skynet territory.”