More pics from the same pilot. Hard to de-skew in photoshop, and I had to drop the brightness massively which introduced visible fringes, but you can see the basic idea…
The whole plate doesn’t display usefully (not many panel mount products can do that usefully)
Here is a “useful” part of the plate showing. One can make out that the text definition is plenty good enough to read although better pics are needed
I played with it in Friedrichshafen and really liked what I saw.
Just spotted this posted by an Avidyne rep in the USA:
I believe that if you have two of their boxes, this is a lot cheaper than the Garmin alternative – except for the Jepp terminal charts which are the usual Jepp price (note the usual bit about “central Europe” not being really “Europe” 
)
That cost is for as many Avidyne units as you can fit in your cockpit
So your question about an audio panel with 3 coms makes sense now.
I believe that if you have two of their boxes, this is a lot cheaper than the Garmin alternative – except for the Jepp terminal charts which are the usual Jepp price
Garmin used a Jepp deal as well, since they now also have their own European flitecharts, Garmin could still be in favour. Garmin Flitecharts do not need the chartview enablement which Jepp charts do, and have much better pricing then Jepp charts.
Rumours posted in the USA, from a pilot flying an Exp Category plane with the pre-certified boxes, suggest that the certified versions are imminent. He has just received them – minus the STC paperwork (which he doesn’t need). Also he is certain that none of the features he has been flying with have been removed for the certified versions.
This sounds good. It means we will have an alternative to the GTN750 which is currently the only game in town if you want LPV with a decent size screen. The IFD540 user interface is also very nice and IMHO nicer than the GTN750.
The concern is the market price. The list price of the IFD540 is the same as the GTN750 and IMHO most people will go for Garmin, on reputation alone. Avidyne are hoping that the plug-in-replacement of their product, for the Garmin 430/530 boxes, will swing it in their favour, and for sure it will save a few k on installation costs, but IMHO a lot of people will want to take advantage of modern features like ARINC429 roll steering so they will end up paying for rewiring anyway… I think Avidyne have large balls to pitch the price that high.
All the flight tests are done .. Only a minor thing remains.. Should be certified by the end of the week. Ditto for synviz on the r9.3. Production has already been started and they expect to ship faster then the “productionmonth” you were in (in my case month 3). At oshkosh they should have fully certified units, i hope that i receive mine in september or october.
From what I have seen as well as with the free Ipad app I am very pleased indeed!
The last status is
(16 July 2014 Certification Update)
FAA TIA flight test of the IFD540 is officially done and passed.
(17 July 2014 IFD540 Certification Update)
The DO-200A audit is complete. We picked up two documentation findings that will be addressed by tomorrow and into the FAA’s hands no later than Monday 21 July. They know the exact documentation changes being made and agree that they fully address the two findings.
AviJake 17 Jul 2014 at 7:26pm Quote ReplyAlmost, but not quite. The FAA is just crunching through the rest of the documentation for their signoff. They have everything and as of Monday, will have no more outstanding action item data. It could be Monday, it could be Thursday. It depends on how fast they can churn through the rest of the data.
IFD 540 is now certified..
They are also holding their webinar and now are starting to explain that the unit also has wifi and bluetooth connectivith natively built in. From what I gather it is there and available from the start.. But have yet to see more details..
At last a real competitor is there .. And I must say that the interface is significantly better than gns or gtn!!
The latest news from the USA is that the wifi and BT hardware is present but the functionality is disabled and will be enabled at a future firmware release.
I have now had the above confirmed. The IFD540 appears to have a WIFI access point, to which somebody’s Iphone was connecting. I will try to find out details. But in any case the features appear disabled for now.
If Avidyne are smart, they will serve a simple web page via which a flight plan can be entered using any web browser. However they will probably not resist the temptation to screw people for a $200-300 app, like Garmin have done.
