Avidyne 540/440

[Piloto]

My 540 has been in about a week. So far so good, it replaced a 530 no W. It has some really slick features.

Looks nice. What features over the G530 appealed to you? I have a G530AW and I am happy with it.

José

[Tony Armour]

First you have to realize that all this time I have been flying approaches with my Garmin 396 :-) The 530 was there to make me legal, it came with the airplane. I jokingly called it ballast. Sad huh ? My 530 was not WAAS. The 2020 ADSB deal has been on my mind and was a deciding factor too.

This happened because my IA called me and said that he had some trade in 530W's that they had to send back to Avidyne. He could send mine in instead and I pay some boot to get a WAAS box. They gave a little less for a non WAAS trade. I queried about the trade in deal and was looking at only $1,500 more to get the Avidyne vs the 530W. And they were doing it for me at cost. I think other shops were at $7,000 trade with a non WAAS, my deal was substantially better.

So really cost was a large part. Beforehand, what I looked at VS a WAAS 530 was newer technology, 530's are 15 years old now. And also getting a warranty.

Had mine been a WAAS 530, I'm not sure I would have even worried about it.

Now that I have learned some about the box there are quite a few nice features. Watching those YouTube videos is much better than me telling you but here are some that stand out to me:

1. Larger and better display. Colors, pixels.

2. Auto fill when entering identifiers.

3. Touch screen but most everything can also be done with buttons, I tend to use both.

4. The name of the frequency is on the display, that's cool. It will auto ident VORs etc and I think that has to happen before it displays the name.

5. Since it knows where you are at, when you start making a flight plan it starts offering you the waypoints, airways , airports etc as a first choice and draws the plan as you progress. I've always been mostly a "direct to" or one waypoint guy myself, flying the heading bug.

6. When selecting approaches and then IAF it draws them on the screen as you scroll thru. Very nice for a visual of what's coming up.

7. Magenta line for the current course, dashed magenta for the next leg.

8. A hold and presentation can be changed for any direction, length etc. Cool but who does holds :-)

9. It will display and geo reference approach plates. I'll prob continue to use the iPad for this instead of keeping the plates updated.

10. It does some audio alerts such as time to descend. I need to get one wire to my audio panel.

11. You can see on the picture that I have the nav frequencies off the main screen and have two standby com frequencies. You can have three standby's if you want them. I'm still playing with how I want everything set up.

Another note, on the picture if you see the little "data" tab to the right of the map, touch it and it hides away, touch again to bring it back.

Oh, and maybe the BEST feature, the port on the front left where you do updates via a thumb drive is a USB. That will charge your phone or iPad = best feature. Haha

The 530 May do some of that too, I never paid attention :-)

[1964-M20E]

Still waiting on my 440 I did not want to rearrange e my whole stack to get the 540.

Hopefully in the next few months.

[Marauder]

First you have to realize that all this time I have been flying approaches with my Garmin 396 :-) The 530 was there to make me legal, it came with the airplane. I jokingly called it ballast. Sad huh ? My 530 was not WAAS. The 2020 ADSB deal has been on my mind and was a deciding factor too.

This happened because my IA called me and said that he had some trade in 530W's that they had to send back to Avidyne. He could send mine in instead and I pay some boot to get a WAAS box. They gave a little less for a non WAAS trade. I queried about the trade in deal and was looking at only $1,500 more to get the Avidyne vs the 530W. And they were doing it for me at cost. I think other shops were at $7,000 trade with a non WAAS, my deal was substantially better.

So really cost was a large part. Beforehand, what I looked at VS a WAAS 530 was newer technology, 530's are 15 years old now. And also getting a warranty.

Had mine been a WAAS 530, I'm not sure I would have even worried about it.

Now that I have learned some about the box there are quite a few nice features. Watching those YouTube videos is much better than me telling you but here are some that stand out to me:

1. Larger and better display. Colors, pixels.

2. Auto fill when entering identifiers.

3. Touch screen but most everything can also be done with buttons, I tend to use both.

4. The name of the frequency is on the display, that's cool. It will auto ident VORs etc and I think that has to happen before it displays the name.

5. Since it knows where you are at, when you start making a flight plan it starts offering you the waypoints, airways , airports etc as a first choice and draws the plan as you progress. I've always been mostly a "direct to" or one waypoint guy myself, flying the heading bug.

6. When selecting approaches and then IAF it draws them on the screen as you scroll thru. Very nice for a visual of what's coming up.

7. Magenta line for the current course, dashed magenta for the next leg.

8. A hold and presentation can be changed for any direction, length etc. Cool but who does holds :-)

9. It will display and geo reference approach plates. I'll prob continue to use the iPad for this instead of keeping the plates updated.

10. It does some audio alerts such as time to descend. I need to get one wire to my audio panel.

11. You can see on the picture that I have the nav frequencies off the main screen and have two standby com frequencies. You can have three standby's if you want them. I'm still playing with how I want everything set up.

Another note, on the picture if you see the little "data" tab to the right of the map, touch it and it hides away, touch again to bring it back.

Oh, and maybe the BEST feature, the port on the front left where you do updates via a thumb drive is a USB. That will charge your phone or iPad = best feature. Haha

The 530 May do some of that too, I never paid attention :-)

Bad -- did they provide you any details about the compatibility of this unit with the ADS-B offerings like FreeFlight or the integration with the Aspen stuff?

[Piloto]

All good points Bad, specially the deal you got on the new unit. Did the shop had to do any rewiring or it was just a straight thru replacement using the old Garmin tray?

José

[stevesm20b]

I'm still waiting for the 440 to come out.

[carusoam]

Good review, Bad...

Had you considered the GTN or BK's KSN 770?

Best regards,

-a-

[amillet]

Avidyne rep at NW Aviation trade show said 440 would be certified in May '15

[Tony Armour]

Bad -- did they provide you any details about the compatibility of this unit with the ADS-B offerings like FreeFlight or the integration with the Aspen stuff?

I think they talk fairly well with the Aspens. Here is a thread and you may search and find more info. I don't understand most of what he is saying. The guy AviJake is with Avidyne and there is constant communication between the owners and Avidyne via that forum and AviJake. Even to the point that they keep a running list of items to add, change etc from the users. Some have already been implimented. I'm not up real well with what it works with regarding ADSB. The 540/440 do have wifi and Bluetooth built in and I think the next software update should open them up. Seems like at first wifi will be out only and Bluetooth both directions. They will not say, but are working with someone on the iPad front.....I think it's Foreflight but that's speculation on my part. If they do that I picture the stratus talking to foreflight and the 540. One thing Avidyne has done is leave their communication wide open where Garmin makes it hard or impossible for other folks to work with them. I'm not sure what I will do but I invison a bonified transponder for ADSB and that feeding into the 540 and then the 540 sending it out to the iPad and hopefully foreflight. I guess it could go lots of different ways.

http://forums.avidyne.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=580&KW=Aspen&title=ifd540-440-integrations-with-aspen-efds-and-acus

[Tony Armour]

All good points Bad, specially the deal you got on the new unit. Did the shop had to do any rewiring or it was just a straight thru replacement using the old Garmin tray?José

The IA had a sheet that he went into the Garmin display and made around 10 ? notes of settings. Power off, slide the Garmin out, slide the Avidyne in, power it up, put those settings in and it was done. Of course we had to change the antenna to a WAAS. I pulled the rear upper panel and swapped the antenna....took 15 minutes plus when I get around to putting the panel back up :-) I think I am going to go ahead with a GPSS box and when we do that add the one wire to the audio panel to get the alerts. Some guys are adding a yoke button or repurposing the ident button to become a com swap from standby to active, one wire.

Some things I am not fond of, possibly because I am not good at change and had flown the 530 for years:

1. If you look at the screen shot you see the box at the top of the map TRK, I wish there was a box beside it DTK the same size. Back to what I am used to seeing :-) I don't think they want to take up anymore map real estate but it should be easy enough for them to give the option for two or even no boxes there.

I have mentioned to Avidyne that I would like for the smaller datablocks to have the capability of being made larger, larger text and numbers. Look at the ground speed box, too small. DTK too small. I'm trying to figure out what I like, you can see on the screen I have two dtk on the top and the CDI on the left showing trk and dtk.

2. Although I didn't see it much, during an approach the 530 gives upcoming and turn now text at the top of the map. The Avidyne gives a colored and maybe flashing indication in the bottom right. It may be fine now that I know where to look but the first time in the air and several on the sim I never even saw it there. I was looking at the top :-)

3. I will, and my wife will miss a dedicated VNAV button. Easy enough to look at the flight plan and get the same info but I still liked the button.

On the picture I posted, you can see the white underlined 4200, that's the altitude that the approach calls for at that point in the approach. That was the GPS 14 to KDNN.

I'll try to think of more.

[Tony Armour]

Good review, Bad...

Had you considered the GTN or BK's KSN 770?

Best regards,

-a-

No, simply because I was planning on waiting until 2018 or so to spend $$ AND to see how all the ADSB stuff pans out. I didn't really care to do anything right now but the deal was a no brainer since I didn't have WAAS. There are at least three (probably more) that did the trade deal with my little shop that traded their 530W's in at the buddy price. I believe the other shops on the web were advertising $6,500 for the 530W trade. My shop, I think, was just wanting to move some Avidyne boxes (they are Garmin dealers too) Everyone that did the deal are maintenance or engine customers, they weren't advertising it or anything. Heck, I didn't find out until Thursday 1/29/15 and the deal stopped month end, so actually the next day which was Friday.

I think, I don't know, but there's a good chance that Avidyne is grinding up the Garmin boxes, ouch.

[Piloto]

Is it possible to declutter the terrain on the nav pages on the 540? I found that terrain depiction decreases the readability (contrast of wpts and routing). I prefer a black background. You are very correct about readability of text. How the is the taxiway depiction works? Wish it was on the 530. But I use a an Aera 560 for taxing and XM\WX that works very well.

 

José  

[Tony Armour]

Is it possible to declutter the terrain on the nav pages on the 540? I found that terrain depiction decreases the readability (contrast of wpts and routing). I prefer a black background. You are very correct about readability of text. How the is the taxiway depiction works? Wish it was on the 530. But I use a an Aera 560 for taxing and XM\WX that works very well.

José

On my picture there is a screen and hard key to the left that say land and nav. Pressing the nav one time turns the screen black. Each key has four settings. I did that on the simulator but it probably works the same on the box. I'm not sure I have looked at the taxiways in the airplane, on the sim they look fine. Of course no geo reference on the plates if the subscription isn't up to date so probably not on the taxi either.

I have not seen a dedicated traffic page like your picture shows. That's nice, I'll have to ask about it.

The sim works good on the iPad especially playing with the touchscreen options. Here's a link with the sim download

http://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd540/ipad-app.asp

[carusoam]

Try the taxiways on the box...

In other systems they get unlocked differently than the approaches...

This is from my WingX experience. Having a blue dot on the taxiways is free... On the plates....$100

Best regards,

-a-

[Piloto]

On my picture there is a screen and hard key to the left that say land and nav. Pressing the nav one time turns the screen black. Each key has four settings. I did that on the simulator but it probably works the same on the box. I'm not sure I have looked at the taxiways in the airplane, on the sim they look fine. Of course no geo reference on the plates if the subscription isn't up to date so probably not on the taxi either.

I have not seen a dedicated traffic page like your picture shows. That's nice, I'll have to ask about it.

The sim works good on the iPad especially playing with the touchscreen options. Here's a link with the sim download

http://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd540/ipad-app.asp

I don't use the dedicated traffic page much because it takes away the NAV page. But in the NAV pages a traffic overlay window pop up when traffic is a threat (yellow dot) together with a voice warning. Even if the NAV page is in the 100nm range the pop up window is 6nm range so I can clearly see where traffic is. You probably will not see any traffic page unless you have a traffic sensor programmed into the 540.

The traffic shown in my 530 is traffic in the pattern while the Moooney was in the hangar.

José