Originally Posted by Mercenary Pilot
I fly coupled to a bendix/king auto-pilot (which is pretty good and works quite well) but Garmin are developing their own autopilot which, when coupled to the G-1000 will offer so many new features including auto throttles.
I think Beechraft (well, Raytheon or whatever
) use the Garmin autopilot/G1000 combo.
The new Bonanza/Baron models with glass panels came a bit later to the glass game, probably because they wanted to have the better integrated Garmin autopilot in the setup. This avoids things like having two separate altitude preselects: one in the G1000 that doesnt get communicated to the bendix/king autopilot, and another in the autopilot itself. So one has to set the altitude in two places (or ignore the other one altogether) - as far as I remember, the all-garmin setup does not have this problem. I would guess there might be other benefits too to have the units working more tightly together.
One can see the difference when comparing the panels: The Garmin autopilot has the autopilot mode selectors on the left sidepanel of the "map screen", instead of being in a separate unit. On G1000-equipped Cessnas etc that part of the G1000 is empty, and they have the Bendix/King unit separately.
Seen here (requires flash plugin):
http://www.raytheonaircraft.com/beec...kpit_tour.aspx
Compare to the G1000 on Diamond DA40:
http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/open.file/0641145/L/ - and on a Cessna:
http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/open.file/1004252/L/ and you see the difference in the G1000 units.