In article ,
Scott Skylane wrote:

Roy Smith wrote:

/snip/ The ability to
have a blind transponder is nice, but hardly necessary. There's a
dedicated button (and a little bit of screen real-estate) devoted to
xponder operations; they could have been devoted to something else.
Perhaps a dedicated FPL button instead of an FPL soft key? I think that
would have made the whole box (a little) easier to use.
/snip/

Roy,

So, even if you don't have a remote xponder hooked up, the screen
*still* dedicates some space to that function? I'd hoped they would
switch that off if you didn't use it.

Well, no, the screen real-estate does get reused for something else (UTC
clock in the one I fly with; for all I know, it's configurable), but the
key is still wasted. Panel real-estate is at a premium on these things; it
seems such a shame to waste a dedicated key on something which you don't
have installed (if you press it, you get a "Key Inoperative" message.