iFly GPS Forum

Yesterday we were on a well planned IFR round robin around Florida with 5 legs, 3.5 hours of IFR proficiency training.

All of the planned Victor Airway routes and fixes were preprogrammed into the iFly 720.

As usual all of the planning went out the window as ATC starting vectoring us. We had put "VFR GPS Onboard" in the flight plan remarks section. They ask us twice if we could navigate direct to unplanned fixs even though we were filed as a slant Alpha aircraft. We were told by Flight Service that filing in the remarks we had a good chance of getting some routes off of the Victor Airways between KSGJ and KGNV. It seems they did take the VFR GPS into consideration.

So that brings up a question, could we get an easy to use Direct To?

I had to fumble around to get into the flight plan section, then had to clear the flight plan and then type the fix.

At the time I wished we had a simple Direct To button on the main page that when pushed would automatically bring up the keyboard to enter the fix. Once we were at the new fix the old flight plan was no longer valid so clearing it was ok. At that point we were being vectored, so I would have liked to hit the Direct To on the main page again and type in the next fix or destination to keep situational awareness keen.

I know this sounds lazy or crazy, but every extra button you have to hit and think about when in IMC is a distraction.

Direct TO-- on the main page takes all of the thinking out of the picture which would be helpful.

As per CW for 700, same deal on 720. i.e. There is already a very Simple Direct to - Tap menu and select 'Direct to' and enter the fix. It then asks if I want that to replace the current flight plan and I say yes.

If on the other hand I'm just skipping some waypoints (i.e. vectored to fix already somehwere later in the plan) then I pull up the plan and hit "direct to" later waypoint in the plan.

Finally there is the combination of the two again from the flight plan, by picking a future waypoint and pressing 'options' then either 'Add Waypoint Before' or 'Add waypoint After' and then secondly clicking 'Direct to' against the newly added waypoint.

I think the first option is what you are after.

I second the softkeys idea, as well as a direct-to right on the map page. I would want this regardless of whether I'm on a flight plan, since that is the fastest way to enter a flight plan when firing up for a direct flight.