High praise for Garmin's Experimental Aviation Support Group!

I decided on a Garmin G3X single screen avionics package with the usual Comm, Transponder, etc. SteinAir, a sponsor, knows these systems inside and out and they made it painless to select components to build the system I wanted. Then came wading through the online G3X Installation manual to learn how all of the boxes plugged together. This is a very thorough manual!

Printing out the sections for my components, including the pin assignments for the wiring connectors, made it easier to understand how the various boxes needed to plug together but there still were questions. Such as, why do these two boxes share both a CAN Bus and RS-232 connection? Garmin's Experimental Aviation Support Group is just an email away and answers to questions were usually returned in a day.

One of the forum regulars, who will remain nameless in his role of innocent bystander, kindly emailed me drawings of his electrical circuits which included a different collection of Garmin components. These were beautifully drawn using the free Draftsight 2D CAD program and inspired me to put aside my yellow pad, covered with wavy lines, and do a more professional job. Garmin's support group had encouraged me to send drawings for their review, so off went five pages of documentation. In a day, a return email said everything look good excepting one change requiring a swap of two RS-232 ports.

While working on the design I exchanged three or four emails with the Garmin Experimental Group. Various staff responded but they were always helpful and their answers were more friendly explainations than curt "yes or no." I was very impressed and wanted to take a minute to praise this group.

They can be reached at g3xpert@garmin.com and you might have seen them post on the Rans forum under the user name G3XPERT.