However, I was surprised to find that, when in a holding pattern, the IFD gave no prompts prior to turns, and gave no indication when crossing the fix, other than the graphic depiction of the hold on screen. I don't even think the CDI changed from "To" to "From", as a VOR would, when crossing the fix.

Is this normal behavior, or am I missing a User Defined Setting somewhere?

Dubs

KRVS

The best indicator of what's going on is to watch the course lines depicted on the MAP display. The current leg is always magenta, the next leg is magenta barber pole. By watching the location of the barber pole you can see what's going to happen next. When you're established in the hold there is no barber pole leg, meaning that you'll stay there forever until you do something.

Mike

Have you read the relevant Pilot Guide section(s) and if so, do you have any recommendations for improvement there?

With GPS navigation you're always flying TO someplace. So the TO/FROM flag doesn't flip much. Even in a hold you're flying back TO the holding fix.

You can maintain situational awareness in two ways that I can think of:

1) If you use the IFD440 MAP page, create a Datablock that shows the distance to the current TO waypoint. As you're nearing the hold it will count down to zero. Enter the hold when it hits zero. It then shows your distance around the hold, reaching zero again whenever you cross the fix.

2) If you like to stay on the IFD440 FMS FPL page, use the MAP tab to display both a map and your flight plan. As you near the hold, scroll the flight plan so that the holding fix, which should be the magenta waypoint, is at the top of the screen.  When you enter the hold the magenta color will flip down to the next block in the flight plan, which is the hold itself. So you can watch the hold on the map (left) side of the page, and see the magenta waypoint flip colors on the flight plan (right) side of the page. 

Those are fairly simple cues that you should be able to include in your scan, even on the small screen of the 440. But it does take some getting used to.

I suggest that you use the IFD440 simulator to run practice scenarios until you are comfortable with the displays and the buttonology. You'll save a lot of time and avgas that way.

Mike

Thanks again,

Jay

When you have the FPL full page up, you have no idea where in the hold you are.  I'd like to suggest a feature request that an additional line be added to the hold flight plan block.  I understand you want the hold to be one block and not broken into multiple for each of the legs, but could you add an additional line to that one block that gives you an indication of where you are in the hold?  Perhaps a line between the waypoint and the altitude restrictions that states "inbound: x.x NM, y.y MIN to fix", "outbound: x.x NM, y.y MIN from fix", "outbound turn" or "inbound turn".

I think it would also be nice to have some sort of dot that travels around the hold graphic in the flight plan.  I don't think this would be sufficient by itself since I think it would be pretty small to see in a scan.

On the MAP page, you can get this information from the datablock, but you don't have access to the datablocks from the FPL page.

I appreciate being able to make recommendations, thanks for continuing to improve the product.

Could there be a Nav Mode datablock that would be small enough to fit on the top so I can fit the existing Waypoint datablock on the left, or could there be an abbreviated Waypoint datablock that removes bearing and ete, which would be small enough on the left to fit in addition to the Nav Mode datablock?  My thought for removing bearing and ete is that bearing is redundant and ete is less applicable if you are not flying to it so those although are nice to have when there is space are not critical.

This might be a case where the greater screen real estate on the IFD100 would be helpful...

Rolfe

The ifd 100 is always on the map page, and the ifd is on the fms page 

If you have 2 ifds then you can skip the iPad.