PCN High Life: Hangar Flying

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Hangar Flying - HL 330 (2)

Columbia 400:

Guys, I am in a GA flying club with a number of airplanes but the two I fly the most are Cessna’s with the G1000 nav system. Well, that same instrument/navigation system (G1000) is in a friend of mine’s airplane the Columbia 400. Yeah, this airplane is fun to be around and fly. From its gull wing doors to its super sleek glass body and wings, this little bird is slick. We just finished a little maintenance test flight and we climbed out of LUK (Cincy Lunkin) to 9,000’ and believe it or not it did that in no time. It has a TCM TSIO-550-C, 310 HP Twin Turbo powerplant and has a 25,000’ service ceiling. Everything about the way it flys with the side mounted joystick, is very responsive and fun. Everytime we go somewhere with the little craft it covers the ground quickly I never once think that the crazy thing still has fixed gear still hanging.

But for all the physical beauty and flying traits of the Columbia, it is the G1000 nav system that is simply the greatest. In a word this isn’t your dad’s old GA aircraft panel. This system is the high dollar version of the G1000 that I fly in my club airplanes. Yes, it is WAAS GPS complete with moving map and complete autopilot integration. It includes a terrain database, ATSB, and an active current weather overlay on your moving map. An old Boeing or Airbus guy would feel right at home flying the Magenta active course and knowing what mode you are in from a top screen “scoreboard” like many of our transport category planes have. Capable of LNAV, VNAV, VPATH, Flight Level Change making this Delta guy feel right at home. Some of the conveniences include when you choose a 10-9 chart you will know your taxi position at all times. When you select an approach for a particular airport you can pre-load it or activate it. If you activate your approach the crazy thing chooses all freqs (comm and nav) , changes the OBS to GPS (magenta) or LOC (green) for ya and snaps to the correct inbound course also loading the jep chart for reference and briefing. In reality, I think it can do most everything that our transport could with a few other options that we never had. In a nutshell it is simply amazing to have this much technology in a little light aircraft that used to have nothing more than a needle ball and airspeed.

As I write this little blurb on this neat little plane, we had a trip scheduled to Mackinac Island that had to be postponed. I would have had even more to items to add to this summary having taken a longer cross country. We are scheduled to go at the end of August so maybe I’ll do a little follow up. If you are still at it, out there playing in clouds, or at least thinking about the days when you did, having a little craft like this to have fun with would certainly be a bonus. For any of you that can give a little report of what you are flying, I would love to publish it in the High Life. Send it on in.

Below are some stock images of what the Columbia 400 looks like. Mark