Flying & Evaluating The Avidyne IFD 540 GPS Navigator

by Michael “Mick” Kaufman

In the April/May 2015 issue of Midwest Flyer Magazine, I promised I would write a review of the Avidyne IFD 540 GPS navigator. To give you a better perspective of the Avidyne IFD 540, I have tried to categorize my review as follows to allow for better understanding: Installation, Learning The Box, Architecture, and Features.

When Avidyne started designing the IFD 540 a number of years ago, their goal was to develop a better Garmin 530 and a direct slide in replacement to that unit, thus saving many hours of labor rewiring the aircraft and interfacing all of the devices connected to it. I had the opportunity to get some ground instruction and fly the IFD 540 from Phoenix, Arizona to California, with an instructor who I consider a “Jedi of the Box,” Randy Bailey of Fort Collins, Colorado.

Installation: Randy informed me that the upgrade from the Garmin 530 to the IFD 540 was literally a slide-in replacement with about an hour or two of labor at the avionics shop to reconfigure and program all of the parameters that tell the IFD 540 what other devices were connected to it. These could include nextrad weather, a fuel totalizer, air-data computers, stormscopes, and traffic advisory equipment.

Learning the Box: I found that after a short time using the IFD 540, I was quite comfortable with it.

Randy pointed out that most pilots who come from a Garmin 530 box will need 10 to 20 hours to get familiar enough to fly IFR with the IFD 540. The reason for my early adaptation comes from my experience with the Garmin 480, which uses Flight Management System (FMS) architecture.

Architecture: To allow you to better understand this review, I will reference and make comparisons to the Garmin 480, Garmin 750 and the gold standard, Garmin 530. To further this review, I would like to point out the two different architectures or formats that most navigators use – the Garmin format and the FMS format, which is used by most airlines and also used in the IFD 540 and the Garmin 480.

Garmin arranges their flight plan in chapters where the FMS uses a continuous waypoint flow. An example of the Garmin chapter format is a chapter for departure, en-route, arrival, approach, and missed approach. It is necessary for you to manually switch from chapter to chapter in most cases unless you use the secret of cheating the system by manually editing and sometimes removing waypoints.

An example of this is to build a flight plan, have a final airport waypoint, then add an approach. The Garmin GPS will then fly you to the destination airport and proceed no farther unless you activate the approach or remove the airport waypoint from the flight plan. When you go missed, you must activate that portion of the flight manually. Using the FMS format, it is not necessary to activate a different chapter, as the airport appears in its proper position in the flight plan sequence and there is a continuous flow from waypoint to waypoint.

Features: Every function of the IFD 540 can be activated with a button and knob combination or using the touch screen. I find this to be one of the strong features of this unit compared to the Garmin 750. In a comparison with the IFD 540 and the touch screen Garmin 750, the Garmin 750 does not support buttons and knobs as an alternate method of programming.

A local King-Air pilot who installed the Garmin 750 found it impossible to reprogram his touch screen navigator in turbulence and installed an add-on FMS keyboard to it, which solved this issue. In a future firmware release, Avidyne will be supporting a bluetooth keyboard and will be including one with all new units purchased. Rumor has it that all of the owners of previously purchased units will receive one as well.

Randy pointed out that database updates are extremely easy to do with the IFD 540, and it is equally easy to download the new data to a USB stick on a computer. The stick is inserted into a port on the left side of the IFD 540, below the frequency swap button, and when the unit is turned on, it recognizes the stick and asks if you want to do a database update.

Randy claims that you do not need to purchase multiple databases if you have two Avidyne GPS units or an Avidyne display in your aircraft. This is a big money saver!

Another unique feature of the IFD 540 is the ability to use two fingers on the touch screen display similar to using Foreflight on your iPad. This feature is not available on the Garmin 750 touch screen unit at this time.

The IFD 540 has the ability to configure up to four communication frequencies to be displayed on the left side of the screen. There is one active and three standbys, and the pilot may select which frequency he/she wants to use by just touching the displayed frequency. Each frequency has a tag, which is referenced to a database and will name the frequency assigned to in the area you are flying. This can be very useful at times as we can all remember having been given the wrong frequency by a controller or misunderstood a frequency change. If you set in a frequency, 122.7 for example, and flew cross-country, it will continuously update to the nearest airport that uses that frequency as you travel. I understand that Garmin is adding this feature to its 750 navigator in a future firmware update.

I have found that the print on the screen of the IFD 540 is a bit small and it may be difficult to read should your eyes be getting close to needing glasses.

Avidyne has a very powerful de-clutter feature to clear the screen of unwanted data, and it is easy for the pilot to use, and there are multiple customizations for the screen set up should several pilots be flying the airplane with different preferences. When you turn the unit on, it can be set up to display the question as to which one of the pilots you are, and then configure it to your preferences. One of the unique data fields I found in the configuration set up is “GPS height above ground.”

When building a flight plan with the IFD 540, you see many similarities with the Garmin 480 GPS navigator. The big difference is that you do not have the ability to save a copy of an active flight plan, then modify it and make it the active flight plan, which is a useful feature for this Jedi. There is a bar on the flight plan screen of the IFD 540, which shows you where the input of a waypoint would go. After tapping on the bar between waypoints, you are then displayed a question asking what you want to do at that point in the flight plan, which could be adding another waypoint, holding, etc. Tapping on a waypoint allows you to modify it should that be necessary.

The IFD 540 makes great use of color on the flight plan screen, and the waypoint displayed in magenta is the waypoint you are currently navigating to. Unlike the Garmin boxes, you can have multiple airports in the flight plan and you can load an approach to more that one airport at a time. In some cases that could be confusing, especially if coming from one of the Garmin boxes.

The IFD 540 has a unique feature that lets you manually select the missed approach procedure any time after passing the final approach fix, rather than the missed approach waypoint if using one of the Garmin boxes. This is a great feature in case something does not go as planned on the approach and gives the pilot guidance in avoiding terrain while flying the missed approach.

Closing Comments: I find all of the new avionics coming out very intriguing, but I am somewhat a geek and always like challenges. There is a definite money savings for the pilot who wants to replace his Garmin 530 with some newer technology. On the opposite side, you need to have a commitment to devote 10 to 20 hours to learn how to use it before flying in IFR.

It was easy for me to transition to the Avidyne IFD 540 because of my Garmin 480 experience, and I could recommend it to Garmin 480 owners looking for an update. You will find that Avidyne as a company is very supportive of interfaces to other manufacturers’ equipment than is Garmin, which is proprietary to their own equipment.

If you have plans to add the brand X ADS-B box, or have one and need a certified GPS to drive it, Avidyne is much more friendly to work with here. I would definitely consider the Avidyne IFD 540 for my own aircraft, but I am a Garmin 480 Jedi.

I find that the Garmin 750 has a very easy learning curve if you transition from a Garmin 530, and the Garmin 750 has a larger display screen.

Special thanks to Randy Bailey for his instruction and the chance to fly and evaluate the Avidyne IFD 540 on that West Coast flight. There are many other great features that I have not yet discovered with this box, and I am hoping that by the end of the year, I can claim the coveted title of “Jedi of the Box.”

Fly safe and never fly in IFR conditions until you have mastered the equipment in your aircraft in VFR conditions.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Michael J. “Mick” Kaufman is a Certified Instrument Flight Instructor (CFII) and the program manager of flight operations with the “Bonanza/Baron Pilot Training” organization. Kaufman conducts pilot clinics and specialized instruction throughout the U.S. in a variety of aircraft, which are equipped with a variety of avionics, although he is based in Lone Rock (KLNR) and Eagle River (KEGV), Wisconsin. Kaufman was named “FAA’s Safety Team Representative of the Year for Wisconsin” in 2008. Email questions to captmick@me.com or call 817-988-0174.

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