Top of Descent Question

I haven't been seeing the TOD marker or hearing the chime on recent flights.  I believe it's because the 540 doesn't assume the last airport in the flight plan (no instrument approach) is a destination, meaning will have an altitude constraint of the airport elevation, therefore I don't meet the TOD requirement of a down-path waypoint with an altitude constraint below me.

Jayson,

It may be a dumb question but are you setting the altitude and distance into the destination airport?  I do not get the TOD either except when I set it in.   If you put a distance before into the destination airport field, it will default to field elevation initially in the altitude area and you will have a TOD.

brou0040 wrote:  the flight plan doesn't assume you'll be landing at your destination.  I'm going to start putting an altitude constraint at or before the airport to get the TOD

I found that all you have to do is scroll to your destination in the flight plan, and click (or touch) the altitude constraint field (just the last bubble where you would dial in the altitude value of the constraint) and that's it.  You don't have to select a distance, you don't have to select a constraint type, you don't even have to select the altitude.  All of that stuff is filled in automatically the moment you click in the altitude block.  So at least it's a one-touch solution.

That said, I also completely agree that it's odd that the FMS doesn't assume that you will try to land at your destination.  Maybe they can put that on the wish list for a future software.

David

I added a vertical constraint to todays destination and the tod worked great. I do not recall a chime, but i wasnt really listening for it either, i have the feature turned on. Thanks for adding the feature to the database.

I'm not sure I understand the OP's problem as stated, but I get the chime on ILS approaches at GS intercept, which is exactly where it should be. This is very convenient as on my Bonanza (and I'm sure many other aircraft) this is essentially a gear down indication. I did have to have my shop double check the audio wiring to make this happen. If you are doing a straight 530 replacement, 99% of 530 installations didn't have audio out wired. The only ones that did were those with TAWS, which might have been some air carriers and such. So obviously, the audio out has to be wired to a non switched audio input on the audio panel for the chime to appear. Avidyne could do a better job of making this clear.

Gring wrote: If you have the 530 TAWS audio pin wired, you do get a doorbell chime at the TOD marker.