Peter,
I agree: and that’s why I bought 99% Dynon gear and it all works great. The only non Dynon bit of kit is the TM250 that feeds traffic, and this is supported by Dynon.
I’m sure the IO540 will happily chug up and down some climbs and descents on a mid throttle setting…. But it’s dead easy to adjust the throttle of course.
As I said earlier I have no “need” for this other than some funky tech and pilot workload reduction.
It strikes me that these days some VFR flight routings are far more complex than IFR so having some vertical waypoint nav on VFR could be really handy.
My AFS 5600 does this, as Dynon own AFS this maybe available on the Dynon now or in the future.
From my 5600 Manual:
Vertical Navigation using the internal Flight Plan
Using the internal flight plan, the EFIS can descend to preset altitudes at each waypoint. For example, if the aircraft is at 10,000ft (set by the ALT BUG), a user can program 8,000ft for the first waypoint, 6,000ft for the second waypoint, 3,000ft for the third waypoint..etc. To enter a crossing altitude, edit a waypoint and enter a distance from the waypoint to cross at and an altitude. Perform this procedure for all waypoints a crossing altitude is desired and press [ACTIVATE]. Note: If no crossing altitudes are entered, the EFIS will follow the ALT bug
I have flown a number of aircraft that can fly the whole flight up to the TOC automaticly and then with one reset of the altitude window fly you to the MAP.
The question is of how much practical use is it ? In theory you would fly the SID and then head on up to cruse altitude but one trip out of Gatwick on the CLN3X would tell you that this sort of automation is inappropriate to an airliner let alone a light aircraft !
The First stop altitude is 4000ft on the CLN3X but before you get to this point you are usually cleared above it and given radar vectors, by the time you are abeam the end of the SID you are usually 20,000 ft above the altitude given at the final fix on the SID and have only usually folown over the first two waypoints on the SID.
So despite the megga$$$$$ spent on PRNAV/VNAV the most used modes of automation are HDG & level change.
There is a lot of clever automation out there but how much of this is of practical use for you ?
Makes a lot of sense.
However for VFR in class G, routing around London, under 1500ft TMZ, etc I can see it has some use. Nobody telling you vectors, just own responsibility for not busting airspace.
I like skydemon’s lower window that shows the vertical profile giving great situational awareness of complex airspace extents, and the magenta line can be setup to do the ups and downs, so rather than wait until the boundary and manually change the Bugs for AP to follow, automation just seems a logical next step.
Yes you can. Some of the waypoints are hardcoded in Altitude and cannot be changed. Some of the others are precoded but can be changed and with others you can add the altitude. However, as I said, it is difficult to actually fly it as ATC would give you intermediate descend clearances that do not match that what you programmed.
The least expensive GPS that can fly the LPV or LNAV/VNAV or +V is the GNS400W. It is the poor cousin of the GNS430W without the VOR/LOC/GS and Com functions.
Let me re-state my original Q, with emphasis were necessary:
You can program multiple enroute waypoints, different altitudes for each, and it will automatically climb and descend, no manual intervention at any stage?
I am not sure about enroute,
I asked about enroute, so why reply to points I didn’t ask about e.g. “it will fly the approach profile with all the descents from the IAF down”? Carl isn’t flying approaches.
you can fly vertical profiles all the way down automatically
All the way down, sure. That isn’t what I asked. What Carl (who is not flying instrument approaches pulled out of a database) was looking for, AIUI, is a means of avoiding CAS enroute by going up and down.
Maybe there is a system which, as Aeroplus suggests, can do this totally hands off. Norman’s posting suggests something similar but again the product description uses “descent” which suggests it is a one-way thing only i.e. it will do a stepped descent (or a stepped climb) which is exactly what A&C is describing for his jet systems i.e. interspersed climbs and descents need manual intervention. For a start, there are obvious questions as to how a user interface for such a capability would be designed, given it would be so easy to program a profile which is nonsensical w.r.t. aircraft performance.
It strikes me that these days some VFR flight routings are far more complex than IFR
That’s possibly true for VFR versus Eurocontrol IFR, because the latter effectively sets CAS aside.
But in reality one doesn’t do a VFR flight with a preprogrammed profile like that. Most long distance VFR stuff is done more simply, with Plan A being as direct a route as possible (and often relying on ATC clearances through CAS) and Plan B being a change to OCAS triggered by some ATC unit refusing a transit.
And if you can get a decent route wholly OCAS then you just plan that and forget about any others. It makes for an easier life… but while this is possible in the UK (and works pretty well most of the time) it is not possible in e.g. much of France, where much airspace is horribly complex.
I have never seen anyone do a complex VFR plan in a preprogrammed manner, although to be fair the tools to do this have not been around for long. Jepp Flitestar has had such a feature for many years but predictably the generated route is so complex that it cannot be navigated unless it can be fed directly into a GPS; there could be 100 waypoints. And I think such routings will usually be complex; too complex to be practical.
Generally, when e.g. going around the LTMA, I would stay at 2300ft and would plan a route which is OK at 2300ft all the way. That is the lowest pilot workload way, and it is safest because there is much more traffic below 2000ft and especially below 1500ft, and much of this low level traffic is nontransponding.
The least expensive GPS that can fly the LPV or LNAV/VNAV or +V is the GNS400W. It is the poor cousin of the GNS430W without the VOR/LOC/GS and Com functions.
Isn’t the 400 quite a rare box? I have never seen one installed.
The least expensive GPS that can fly the LPV or LNAV/VNAV or +V is the GNS400W. It is the poor cousin of the GNS430W without the VOR/LOC/GS and Com functions.
I concur with NCyankee 
