Mike Adams wrote:
Roy Smith wrote:

BTW, congrats on the IR, Ron. I was starting to wonder if you'd ever
get around to it :-)


Yes, I'll echo that. Congratulations. I didn't realize you have a 480 in the Navion. I have a 480 as well, and
am very happy with it. I got the IR a few years ago, and I've often wondered whether it would be easier or
harder with the GPS.

I've had the 480 in the plane for a bit over a year now along with an
MX20 and CHARTVIEW. My instructor was pretty adept at teaching the
480 "button mashing" and we practiced on the 480 emulator on my lap
top while flying the desktop simulator he brought. Between his
instruction and my previous experience it wasn't hard.

The moving map makes the rating almost too easy :-). It certainly
makes the partial panel approach a trivial issue, just zoom up the
480 screen and watch the pseudo-HSI and bearing to station. The
only caveat I can say is be sure to follow the purple line on the
MX20 AND NOT the lines on the approach plate. There's sometimes
a lag in the plate realigning with the course and we had a bit of
confusion because the KSHD GPS23 has a "not to scale" piece on the
chart which led me to inadvertantly enter the hold early (oops...
crosscheck, crosscheck).

I did almost all my training before I realized the volume on the
alerts was turned down. I didn't have the little lady going
"bong missed approach" until the last day. The thing also saved
my butt on the checkride. I dutifully loaded up all my radios
with com and nav freqs on the ground prior to taking off. When
I selected the ILS, it goes "Boing" and tells me it's put the ILS
freq into the flip flop for me. Ooops...the one I've dialed in
is a megahertz off. I would have caught that when I ID'd the
thing, but I appreciate the explicit heads up.

The only thing we couldn't figure out an easy thing for is how to
back it up to the holding pattern if you let it sequence out of
it while circling an additional time. You can turn the FPL back
to the holding entry (but not the hold) where it thinks you
want to go direct to the fix and hold again. We just ignore
the GPS proposed nav instead and fly around one more time and
let it catch up with us when we finally go inbound.

The only other fun thing is my 480 goes to the HSI. During
partial panel GPS approaches the stickies cover up the CDI
on the HSI. The CDI on the 480 goes away during GPS approaches
as well. Again, I just zoom up the display and drive the
purple line.