My 12 favorite features of the Avidyne IFD

i've had my avadyn ifds for about a year now that's a good time to look back and see how i like it and if it was a meaningful upgrade from the old garmin gns 530 and 430 which i had before here are my 12 favorite features of the avadyn ifds [Music] no more twisting knobs to scroll through the alphabet the ifds bring up a query keyboard on the touchscreen display for easy data entry and if you have two ifds like i do one can become the keyboard for the other which is super nice because you can see both the keyboard and the screen you're entering data into if you have only one device you'll like this little bluetooth keyboard which some people velcro to their panel or yoke data entry takes a fraction of the time compared to what it used to be with the gns [Music] almost everything you see on the top and the left and right sides of the ifd display is configurable by the owner there's a large catalog of displayed items to choose from simple things like utc time or distance to the next flight plan waypoint or more complex things like a course deviation indicator or a miniature map for traffic display and if you have multiple pilots sharing an aircraft you can customize up to 5 user profiles all with their own data block settings this may not be the most often used feature but at the right time it can come in very handy the ability to load more than one approach into the flight plan i've used that to pre-program approaches flown in good weather for practice and it can also be useful to have a backup approach ready at your destination maybe one with lower minimums but not as well aligned with the wind and have that ready to go in case you go missed on the first one my radio stack is state-of-the-art but the six-pack in front of me is still an old steam gauge panel i only have one attitude indicator in my panel so the ahar is in the ifd 550 ahar stands for attitude and heading reference system is a welcome safety feature it works very well and while it's not approved as a primary attitude source in emergency say should my instrument pressure pump fail in flight you do what you have to do and i will be happy to have a working backup horizon there is a synthetic vision display and while i haven't flown in mountainous terrain yet since i installed the ifd it also shows runways obstacles traffic and even the flight plan ahead together with the horizontal and vertical deviation bars you have a lot of good information all in one place really better than anything i have in my six pack today at home in the midwest i am clear direct destination on most of my flights but in some places like on the east coast airways are still very much the normal way of instrument flying life or in the mountains where an airway may offer lower meas than flying direct and the ifds make using airways super easy while the old gns had me look up and enter waypoint by waypoint the ifds have airways in the navigation database and make their use in the flight plan much easier simply select which airway to get on and the point where you want to leave it done [Music] the gns could already fly holding patterns if they were part of an instrument approach procedure but not anywhere else if you got a random hold assigned while end route or in the terminal area you had to navigate it manually unlike the ifd we can insert a custom hold at any wave point your flight plan and set the turn direction leg length or time and the inbound cores done the ifd will take care of the rest [Music] the gns already had a feature to plan and descend by entering a required crossing altitude for a flight plan waypoint and the desired vertical speed that was very helpful the evidence ifd takes us a couple of notches up by allowing entries of altitude constraints for almost all waypoints in the flight plan for applicable instrument procedures like stars or approaches it even populates these altitude constraints automatically from the navigation database it does not command an autopilot to fly the descent profile current software only does that on the final approach but it computes when to start the descent shows the vertical speed required to get to the next target altitude and and that may be the best part it shows a little green arc indicating where the next altitude target will be reached at the current vertical speed showing you in an instant whether you're too steep too shallow or just right boeing airplanes have the same symbol on the navigation display thus the nickname boeing banana [Music] the gns used proprietary memory cards for the navigation database and special programming devices to get the data from computer onto the cart that was a slow process and if a memory card was lost or damaged yep they're expensive to replace compare that with the ifd which uses a standard usb memory stick five bucks will buy a replacement if needed and programming them only takes a few seconds it's super easy to install the data in the ifds and when you're done those usb ports can be used to charge electronic devices in flight last but not least the japas and database subscription for my ifds is cheaper than what i used to pay for the gns subscriptions [Music] the ifd 100 is an ipad app which at first glance looks like an efp but i think of it more as a large remote control for the ifd in the panel for the cheap price of an ipad it gives you a second touch screen to view ifd data maps and charts on and to control the radios and edit the flight plan this is especially useful if your panel or your wallet only has room for one ifd [Applause] [Music] the ifd comes with wi-fi built in and you can use it to connect wirelessly to an ipad so that your efb app and the ifd can sync up on the flight plan this works in either direction you can prepare a flight plan with four flights at home and push it into the ife in the cockpit or make edits on the ifd and then pull the fireplan from there to the ipad in fairness to the dns units it is possible to do this with them as well but it requires the installation of extra hardware while the ifds have the wi-fi module built in from the factory with the right kind of transponder or uat device the gns can already show adsb weather and traffic on the screen but how much nicer does it look and how much more readable is this information on the large high resolution display of the ifd my l3 links transponder provides a separate smaller traffic display and it's often useful to see traffic at a small range say 2-6 miles even if the flight plan map shows a much larger range on the ifd you can use the configurable data blocks to show such a minimap on the site very useful if your transponder doesn't have one if you have a fuel totalizer or digital engine monitor with fuel flow it will send the amount of fuel remaining to the ifd with the current ground speed that allows the ifd to know the approximate range you can fly until you're out of fuel it's an estimate only of course assuming that winds and fuel burn remain constant for the rest of the flight but it's very helpful to have this estimate depicted on the map the solid ring means no more fuel the dashed one shows where you can go and still have a 45 minute reserve is there anything i don't like i don't believe the upgrade from the garmin gns to the avidyne ifd was a step backwards in any possible way but i do have three suggestions for avidyne which i hope they can work into a future software update to make the ifds even better the first is to automatically synchronize flight plan changes from the ifd to an efb app like forflight sometimes it can be helpful to keep the ipad and the ifd separate but most of the time i would prefer the update on the ipad to be automatic second complete the autopilot interface so the vertical profile cannot just be shown on the ifd screen but flown automatically by the autopilot it already works for the final approach segment of an approach so i hope it can work for end route descents as well and third while the custom hold feature is a great addition in the ifd it requires the holding fix to be a flight plan waypoint meaning that the clearance like this clear to the deer park zero niner zero radial eight dme fix hold east of the atme fixed on the zero nine zero radial right turns ten mile legs requires the creation of a user waypoint which isn't difficult but it takes extra time if instead the hold had an option to enter a number of miles before or after the selected waypoint much like what the ifd does for altitude constraints already it would be even more useful i love the avadon ifds they're a huge step up from the old garmin gns in so many ways if you have flown with an ifd feel free to share your favorite feature here in the youtube comments and if you have a question about them i'll gladly try to answer it here fly safe and see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Martin Pauly

Views: 15,538

Keywords: Avidyne, IFD, Avidyne IFD, IFD 550, IFD 540, IFD 440, IFD550, IFD440, IFD540, FMS, Flight Management System, GPS, GPS/NAV/COM, review, comparison, Garmin GNS, Garmin Avidyne, Garmin vs Avidyne, Avidyne vs Garmin, IFD vs GNS, GNS vs IFD, Avidyne IFD550 review, Avidyne IFD440 review, avidyne ifd550 vs garmin gtn 750, favorite features, IFD favorite features

Id: m_BSKxNhjJU

Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 14 2020