what next, sure there’s a right and a wrong way. One example: While the GNS430 will give you GPS guidance from the IAF to the Localizer the system will only switch from GPS to VLOC automatically (and set the HSI to the FC) if you fly the intermediatae approach with NAV (and not GPSS. If you fly this portion of the approach with GPSS you have to swicth from GPS to VLOC manually and you have to set the Final Course manually too. And there’s more traps than these. Some of this stuff is NOT described in any of the manuals, so you have to learn it.
GPS approach behaviour is certainly the most full of nasty tricks bit of an IFR GPS, but I have to ask : why use the GPS to fly to the LOC ?
Why not just fly in HDG mode ? You have a moving map so you can see where you are and anyway many ILS approaches are on vectors.
I don’t recall if this guy was going for the ILS or the RNAV but I think he had bigger issues than this.
Usuallly you fly the route in the GPSS and if you load the ILS approach as the end of your flight plan in the GNS430 it is tempting to just leave the autopilot in GPSS mode, becasue it WILL fly the standard ILS approach from the IAF. So you better switch from GPSS to NAV (fully coupled standard approach via IAF) or HDG+NAV for Vectors before reaching the IAF.
In the (Aviydne equipped!) Cirrus when the #1 GNS430 is set up the right way (“auto CDI”) and the PFD source is switched to GPS1 or NAV1 then the PFD will AUTOMATICALLY put the HSI course pointer to the Final Course and switch from GPS navigation to VLOC automatically. If all this is set right you don’t have to do anything but reduce power and set flaps. The LOC and GS appear automatically on the PFD too. If you are in GPSS mode the automatic switching will not happen – you have to press the VLOC key on the GPS.
What’s really interesting is that it flies by GPS data in Nav too until it receives the Loc and switches to radio navigation. Took me some time to understand. I might add that I am still in the learning phase :-) but I was taught by Avidyne that technically with the DFC90 autopilot there is NO difference in flying GPSS or NAV – and some more experienced pilots with the same equipment told me to BETTER not use GPSS but ONLY NAV.
… just leave the autopilot in GPSS mode, becasue it WILL fly the standard ILS approach from the IAF.
The only times I fly standard ILS approaches is when I instruct. I can’t remember when I flew the last standard approach from the IAF in real life, it is always radar vectors to final. Which I usually fly on “green needles” i.e. with NAV mode (localizer/glide slope) armed and HDG mode to intercept. But this is not the “right way” as I could also do it in LNAV/VNAV mode with heading and vertical speed and altitudes entered through the FMS. Or even with turn knob and pitch wheel like they taught me in the States for flying circling approaches. The important thing is that I always know what I’m doing.
The brain has gone back to “reptile behavior” and the means for applying that ingrained behavior, the six-pack, are not there any more. So in order to survive the best course of action with a well defined outcome is to pull the chute. To me that makes totally sense.
This makes perfect sense. I think ther’s another thing at work: with the six-pack you don’t actually have to look at the dials to know what’s happening. After a couple of hundred hourts, you se them from peripheral vision and pick up any anomaly if the dials aren’t where they should be. In a glass cockpit you need to consciously read and interpret the information. A very different approach.
However, that type of event does tell me one thing. As I’m training for the IR at the moment, I will avoid any and all six-pack aircraft and do everything in the Cirrus I intent to use in the foreseeable future. I don’t want to teach my reptile brain anything that it will then try to use, although the situation is different, when under pressure.
My thinking entirely. When I’m back in L.A. next time, I’m gonna sign up for a conversion course.
what next,
but that was not what I was talking about :-)
I was talking about a standard ILS approach and how it is done the right way. I DO GET standard approaches, because I request them fro training purposes.
Took me some time to understand. I might add that I am still in the learning phase :-) but I was taught by Avidyne that technically with the DFC90 autopilot there is NO difference in flying GPSS or NAV – and some more experienced pilots with the same equipment told me to BETTER not use GPSS but ONLY NAV.
This is the tricky aspect of the DFC90. The G1000 is much easier. Only one NAV mode.
And procedural approaches are normal in the UK. Get them all the time.
This is the tricky aspect of the DFC90. The G1000 is much easier
The DFC90 is just an autopilot, controlled presumably via ARINC429 steer commands from a GPS. It doesn’t know anything about navigation.
The G1000 is just a GPS.
How can one be better than the other.
Did you perhaps mean G1000+GFC700 is better than a GNS/GTN+DFC90?
Well, it’s all more integrated than that.
It’s GarminG1000/Perspective including the DFC700 Autopilot vs. Avidyne Entegra (or R9) + GNS430 + DFC90 Autopilot. In both you control many features of the autopilot via the knobs of keys on the PFD (Altitude Select, IAS Select, VS Select, Heading Bug, QNH Setting) and on the other other hand the GNS430 has to be set the right way so that the PFD sets the Final Course and switches its Navigation Source from GPS to VLOC ….
How can one be better than the other. Did you perhaps mean G1000+GFC700 is better than a GNS/GTN+DFC90?
Well OK yes, I actually mean the GFC700 is better in my view than the DFC90 as the GNSS/NAV distinction is incredibly unclear on the Avidyne in my view. Great autopilot but it is unclear and poorly explained in the docs.
