AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2020 - 98

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98 | AOPA PILOT November 2020

The 175 does one
thing, and one thing
only-WAAS-but it's
enough for most IFR
pilots.
30-something airports I flew to (from
Yakima, Washington, to Brunswick,
Georgia) have GPS approaches suitable
for a GPS 175.
Looking at the finished panel, I'm
amazed at both its vast capability and its
sparseness. It provides exceptional situational awareness in flight, yet the boxes and
their wiring only weigh about 10 pounds total
and use less than 10 amps-a minimal electrical draw for the airplane's 40-amp alternator.
I'm acutely aware of the airplane and
panel's limitations. There's only one aircraft
battery (and a standby for avionics, only),
one alternator, one autopilot, one transponder, one ADS-B receiver, and one engine.
So single-point failures are a real concern.
There also are no deice or anti-ice systems,
so it's not an airplane for all seasons.
My first big trip in the airplane was a
12-hour, four-leg flight to Florida and back

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The GPS 175 is an outlier for Garmin
because of its minimalist nature: It only
provides WAAS GPS approaches. If
you want to fly ILS, localizer, or VOR
approaches, forget it. The 175 doesn't have
a radio, a remote transponder, an audio
panel, or any of the other goodies Garmin
likes to bundle in its avionics.
The 175 does one thing, and one thing
only-WAAS-but it's enough for most IFR
pilots.
Just about every runway served by an
ILS approach in the United States also
has a (WAAS) LPV approach with similar
minimums. The tipping point at which GPSonly became viable in the United States has
already been reached and surpassed.
There were more than 4,000 LPV
approaches in the United States in mid2020 serving about 2,000 airports. Put
another way, there already are more than
twice as many LPV approaches as ILS procedures-and the LPV lead is accelerating.
When you consider the total number of
GPS approaches, they currently outstrip all
ground-based procedures combined. There
are roughly 7,000 GPS approaches in the
United States-more than all ILS, VOR,
NDB, and localizer approaches.
I reviewed my own flying for the
last 12 months and found that all of the

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2020