Garmin GTX 345 ADS-B Transponder

Now, it's not very often I test-fly a transponder. Back in the day when Mode C was the epitome of surveillance technology, going flying to see how your transponder worked was about as interesting as trying out the flip/flop switch on your King comm radio. "Yup, it seems to work, time for lunch." With the gradual advent of ADS-B, times have surely changed. Transponders may not be sexy, but there's a lot more to them than ever before. With ADS-B, you get lots of goodies to accompany the new surveillance tool (which, unfortunately, sits right atop, sometimes figuratively speaking, your aforementioned, old-school, still-required Mode C grinder).

ADS-B brings to the party two big things: weather and traffic. The weather is good, not as good as SiriusXM, but close enough to make it a viable alternative for those who don't want to pay a monthly subscription fee. You get most of the things you really want from the weather, the biggest of which is digital radar. There are weather reports and forecasts, winds aloft and visibility, plus lots more.

The traffic, on the other hand, is world-class, which is good, since the whole idea behind ADS-B is to reinvent surveillance (which means knowing where other airplanes are). With ADS-B In and Out, you get incredibly accurate distance and position information, because it's derived from the incredibly accurate GPS/WAAS unit in every aircraft participating in the system. It's no longer a best guess on how far away the traffic is based on the strength of the transponder reply. Now you know where it actually is. You also get accurate altitude and directional trend information, which makes it much easier to see not only where the traffic is, but where it's headed. Of course, you need ADS-B In (in addition to ADS-B Out) and a compatible display to see the traffic, which costs a little more. But the way that Garmin has figured out how to get you that traffic is ingenious. And, in the process of doing that, they've also figured out how to use that same technology to give you other cool cockpit tools.

So to bottom-line that mouthful, with ADS-B, you may not get egg roll, but you get traffic and free weather, plus with the built-in wireless capability of the GTX 345 transponder, you get wireless GPS position, and attitude for your tablet running Garmin Pilot or ForeFlight.

The GTX 345 is a dual-band unit, so you can fly with it at any altitude and get the weather and traffic benefits with ADS-B In. You can display the weather on a variety of cockpit displays, including many Garmin G1000 integrated systems. The capabilities and compatibility of different iterations of G1000 from different companies and in different airplanes and serial number ranges make it impossible for the GTX 345 to be universally compatible with G1000 installations, but Garmin says there are many of them out there that are. This is great news for these owners of, as Garmin puts it, "select" G1000 systems, as they can, if already equipped with WAAS, simply connect it all up with a remote-mounted version, the GTX 345R. It becomes a really cheap way (and, in some cases, the only way) for some owners to give their G1000 a "W" for WAAS. It will also give some of those select G1000 systems the ability to display traffic on synthetic vision PFD and to display ADS-B traffic on the multifunction display.

Many owners of non-G1000 airplanes will send the ADS-B data from the GTX 345 to a panel-mounted display; the GTX 345 is compatible with the GTN 750 multifunction navigator/nav/comm and the G500 primary/multifunction aftermarket flat-panels.

Instead of or in addition to displaying that data on a panel-mount or integrated display, many of us will want to view it on our tablets, using a wireless hookup to integrate the weather, traffic and other data into our Garmin Pilot or ForeFlight apps, both of which do magic with that information, using it smartly in a host of features.

The Garmin GTX 345 costs $4,995, not including installation. To get more information on it, visit buy.garmin.com or stop by your local Garmin avionics shop.