eal wrote:
I am also pleased to report that I have successfully shot several LNAV/VNAV approaches despite not having SBAS coverage here, and all the LNAV only approaches so far have been presented with +V. Both of which have provided the KFC225 with a solid glideslope as advertised.
What are you using to get LNAV/VNAV vertical guidance? Is there an FMS that has Baro-VNAV vertical guidance on your aircraft? I know that the current SBAS TSO C146e allows for +V when outside a SBAS service volume, but that would not apply to LNAV/VNAV.
Peter wrote:
This is very interesting to me for when I upgrade the TB20 to some modern avionics. My current plan is 2×IFD540.
I would recommend you consider an IFD550/540 combo. The IFD550 can almost act as a backup PFD with an AH presentation and an ARS output to ForeFlight on an Ipad.
At a glance, it also appears that v10.3 new functionality is also favoring the IFD550 much more so than the other models which may well be an indication of the direction Avidyne is going in the future.
Cheers – E
I am also pleased to report that I have successfully shot several LNAV/VNAV approaches despite not having SBAS coverage here, and all the LNAV only approaches so far have been presented with +V. Both of which have provided the KFC225 with a solid glideslope as advertised.
That sounds neat as expected but was not guarateed 
Does IFD give you a “visual approach” to fly when no IAP is published or you have to wait for their next software releases?
NeilC wrote:
Maybe that’s a setup thing. My GP automatically shows the Garmin SafeTaxi chart after landing, so that my wife can tell me where to go 😉
I have been unable to get SafeTaxi to work in Asia. I think Garmin only selectively supports it by region.
boscomantico wrote:
@eal why did you go for Avidyne if you do prefer Garmin Pilot?
I was very happy overall with my panel and enjoy flying behind a mixture of new and mainly old instrumentation with no real urge to change anything else. The 530/430 units have been extremely reliable and capable, but with one eye on the future I decided the writing is on the wall for the GNS units. At some point they will fail with uncertain support moving forward, or just get left behind technologically. The proliferation of RNP LNAV/VNAV approaches here in Thailand was the final push that made me pull the trigger.
I neither had the appetite, nor budget for a major panel rework and all the risk that goes with it, disturbing a perfectly good set up minding its own business.
There are no decent local avionics shops here either so I generally have to take care of the avionics myself :-)
The idea of a plug and play replacement that would easily catapult me into modern avionics was very appealing, and I have to say, so far I am very impressed with Avidyne. Out of the box they have played nice with all the rest of my legacy avionics.
Avidyne also committed to support me in the full knowledge that I had no access to a local dealer or avionics shop potentially needing a lot of hand holding. They seem prepared to let owners access to the innards, just like Garmin used to. ;-)
I am also pleased to report that I have successfully shot several LNAV/VNAV approaches despite not having SBAS coverage here, and all the LNAV only approaches so far have been presented with +V. Both of which have provided the KFC225 with a solid glideslope as advertised.
Having to switch to ForeFlight was the price of admission, and frankly despite my gripes, it is a very usable and capable system but clearly developed/ evolved with a different philosophy to Garmin Pilot. In fairness the Avidyne approach to an FMS based GPS is also taking some getting used to after 13 years of muscle memory driving the GNS boxes, but I am enjoying the process.
Cheers – E
Indeed, one aspect in deciding GTN vs. IFD is one’s personal preference for GP (which one might be inclined to use with a Garmin panel) or FF (which one might want to use with an Avidynde panel). So, ideally, one would have some real-life experience with both apps before deciding on the GTN vs. IFD question.
@eal why did you go for Avidyne if you do prefer Garmin Pilot? I assume due to less installation work when going GNS to IFD vs. GNS to GTN? Which, in itself, remains quite remarkable, of course.
After landing, I found FF much better at displaying geo-referenced airport data allowing for easier taxying.
Maybe that’s a setup thing. My GP automatically shows the Garmin SafeTaxi chart after landing, so that my wife can tell me where to go 😉
I have recently installed dual IFD550/440 to replace my GNS530W/430W in my Jetprop.
With the change has come the need to switch from Garmin Pilot to ForeFlight. So far it has been an “interesting” transition, biased somewhat by my familiarity with Garmin Pilot, but I thought it would be a good exercise to share some of the more striking differences with a view to a better understanding of how to get the best out of ForeFlight moving forward.
The first handicap is that ForeFlight does not specifically cover Asia as a region, so I am having to run the European version. The base map detail of FF is quite poor compared to that of GP. The wind barbs on FF are tiny and much further spaced out almost making them unreadable. The profile view of the flight plan does not offer any wind information in FF, only tabular winds accessed via the flight altitude box. On FF Airway labels only appear at high zoom views making flight planning much more laborious as I have to constantly keep zooming in to see any airway labels. I have found switching to the Jeppesen base map is better in this regard than FF’s native aeronautical base map, but Jeppesen maps lack a lot of underlying detail.
My next impression is regarding the general handling of entering and managing flight plans.
FF seems much weaker in this area. The limited size of the FPL box (cannot be expanded) means that in the Nav view mode you can only see 3 lines of the flight plan plog at any given time, and there are no altitude constraints shown. The main FPL view of the waypoints listed by name only with no other attributes shown does not seem to be particularly useful other than when entering quick and dirty flight plans pasted in from another source.
There appears to be no way to see basic information like TOD or TOC points in the FF Navlog part of the FPL. I know that a very detailed plog is available via the pre stored Flights section, but this is not connected to the real time flight data, only as a static look up reference.
In flight using Direct To, FF unhelpfully deletes every prior waypoint prior to the Direct to point, and inserts your current long/lat in their place. This has already proved to be a practical limitation when ATC clears you direct to a point, only later on to have an upstream controller amend the direct to, to a prior waypoint that no longer exists in FF. I fail to understand the rational of this behavior and FF support tell me this is working as designed and cannot be changed. The only way around this I have found is using “Direct to a leg” rather than a WP, which does not delete any prior WP’s.
The map drawing on FF is significantly faster than GP (I am using an Ipad Air2), and I have noticed that with each major release of GP, it is getting slower and slower refreshing all the map layers. Perhaps this will be mitigated on newer IPads, but it does seem that GP is getting more bloated in this area.
The annotation of altitude constraints on the FF map is much clearer than GP even when not superimposing arrival or approach charts, so this does make up somewhat for the lack of any altitude information on the FPL plog.
There is no ADSB weather coverage out here, so I rely on the Satellite Enhanced view on both apps when on the ground. The resolution of the various temp layers is very crude and blocky on FF compared with GP. I am guessing this comes from the resolution being provided by ADSB datalink weather in the USA, but to apply the same resolution when connected to internet based weather sources seems quite crude to me.
After landing, I found FF much better at displaying geo-referenced airport data allowing for easier taxying.
FF also scores with its ability to suggest ATC approved routing in this region, which is not available via GP at all for Asia.
GP does a much better job of automatically logging each flight and prefilling all the pilot and aircraft data based on the FPL. FF requires a lot of manual input after the flight.
FF support have been very responsive so far, much more so than Garmin, and I get the impression that FF is being developed at a much faster rate than GP which also has to keep conforming to the UI look and feel of their GPS boxes.
None of the above are show stoppers as such, and either app does a very good job overall of providing a lot of pilot aids.
Cheers – E
RobertL18C wrote:
@Emir thank you, my mini is on 12.4.9 so am guessing it is missing some of the latest functionality of the ForeFlight app.The app works, however, but am not sure what features are not loaded.
The last version of ForeFlight for older iPad (like mine Mini 3 – iOS version 12.5) is 12.9.2. You don’t miss much, maybe some bug fixes related to 3D view and daily weather forecast (basically useless features for any aviator). However, in the future anything they add to application will be available only on devices supporting iOS 13 and above.
