Garmin GTN650 or Avidyne IFD440

[hais]

8 minutes ago, midlifeflyer said:

If you are a big fan of Garmin's 3-mile final "visual approach," you might really like Avidyne's version.

 

For me, I'll have guidance through circle to land please

[midlifeflyer]

10 hours ago, hais said:

For me, I'll have guidance through circle to land please

The actual guidance is limited. Like the Garmin, the magenta line, course indicator, and vertical guidance are limited to final. What Avidyne adds is a white broken line depiction of the pattern based on your selection for general situational awareness  

I'm on the fence in whether either is all that useful. Garmin's 3 mile final seems to be encouraging long straight ins. Avidyne is better with a 1 mile final and 1.2 mile base (user can modify) but it's best use might be to tell those C152/747 pilots where the pattern is actually located. One was so far out the other day during touch and goes, I asked if they decided to leave.

[Pinecone]

If you do GTN and Garmin audio panel, you can do things by voice command.

 

[rbp]

10 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

If you are a big fan of Garmin's 3-mile final "visual approach," you might really like Avidyne's version.

 

ForeFlight has VFR pattern selection too, and I miss it in the Garmin products

with the GFC500 and the GTN, you also get VNAV to the 3NM fix

[midlifeflyer]

17 minutes ago, rbp said:

with the GFC500 and the GTN, you also get VNAV to the 3NM fix
 

Even more incentive to fly  long VFR straight ins instead of flying the pattern.  

Other than my comment about 152/747 pilots, I can see value in emergency use in marginal VFR conditions to airports without instrument approaches (so long as the threshold is defined and in the database). 

[kortopates]

The actual guidance is limited. Like the Garmin, the magenta line, course indicator, and vertical guidance are limited to final. What Avidyne adds is a white broken line depiction of the pattern based on your selection for general situational awareness  
I'm on the fence in whether either is all that useful. Garmin's 3 mile final seems to be encouraging long straight ins. Avidyne is better with a 1 mile final and 1.2 mile base (user can modify) but it's best use might be to tell those C152/747 pilots where the pattern is actually located. One was so far out the other day during touch and goes, I asked if they decided to leave.

so out of curiosity, how far perpendicular to the runway does does the Avendyne show the downwind? within the standard FAA pattern of 0.5 to 1nm?


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[midlifeflyer]

3 minutes ago, kortopates said:

so out of curiosity, how far perpendicular to the runway does does the Avendyne show the downwind? within the standard FAA pattern of 0.5 to 1nm?


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The default is 1.2 NM. But remember it's not for tracking purposes just general location.  And it's better than the annoying 2+ miles I often see.

[EricJ]

6 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

The actual guidance is limited. Like the Garmin, the magenta line, course indicator, and vertical guidance are limited to final. What Avidyne adds is a white broken line depiction of the pattern based on your selection for general situational awareness  

I'm on the fence in whether either is all that useful. Garmin's 3 mile final seems to be encouraging long straight ins. Avidyne is better with a 1 mile final and 1.2 mile base (user can modify) but it's best use might be to tell those C152/747 pilots where the pattern is actually located. One was so far out the other day during touch and goes, I asked if they decided to leave.

The airports around here can be extremely busy, and I've found this feature useful to help offload a little bit of the approach management in favor of moving some of that mental bandwidth to increased traffic awareness.    My home field, DVT,  has two parallel runways, usually with separate controllers, and keeping an eye on traffic ahead and on the parallel runway (which I'm often not hearing about), is a little easier if I'm using this to help get lined up and on approacha little more easily.

I've used it from time to time and find it fairly useful for a few things.   I don't think it's a must-have, but it's definitely nice to use.

[Pinecone]

7 hours ago, rbp said:

ForeFlight has VFR pattern selection too, and I miss it in the Garmin products

with the GFC500 and the GTN, you also get VNAV to the 3NM fix

How do you get that?????

[rbp]

1 hour ago, Pinecone said:

How do you get that????

PROCEDURE->TRAFFIC PATTERN->[select runway]->[select pattern]

you can also set the pattern altitude

 

 

 

[Pinecone]

Thanks

 

[hais]

10 hours ago, Pinecone said:

If you do GTN and Garmin audio panel, you can do things by voice command.

 

Not all panels though, for instance, GMA 245R doesn't.