Today I finally received one of my instrument panel items that I’ve had on the list of things to buy for years now!  About a week ago I pulled the trigger on the Trio Pro Pilot Autopilot control head.  If you recall, I bought the servos from a guy off of eBay a couple of years ago and had them sent straight to Chuck at Trio who upgraded and ops checked them to ensure all was good.

This autopilot unit has the GPS Steering (GPSS) and GPS Vertical Steering (GPSV) options on it, with the GPSS allowing the Pro Pilot to receive GPSS commands from the GRT EFIS or Garmin via ARINC 429 data outputs.  The GPSV allows the autopilot to receive pitch steering commands from a WAAS GPS receiver for precision approaches using GPS.

In addition, after a lot of discussion over the years, Chuck tweaked one of the pull up resistors in this Pro Pilot’s innards so that it can receive fuel data from the FT-60 Red Cube fuel flow meter along with the GRT EFIS.  This gives me fuel management on both the EFIS and the Pro Pilot, which provides some pretty nifty fuel flow information.