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Terrain warnings on approach to private airports

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mileserickson View Drop Down
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    Posted: 27 Mar 2015 at 12:32am
I recently flew my airplane home after the installation of the IFD540 that I pre-purchased at Oshkosh in 2014. One thing that has surprised me is that, unlike the Garmin 496 VFR GPS that previously occupied my panel, the IFD540 is completely unaware of private airports with four-character identifiers.

When I am on final approach to a private airport, the IFD doesn't understand what is going on, so it pops up a bogus "Terrain / Pull Up" warning. Worse yet, yesterday evening, on final approach to a grass airstrip where my primary concern at or after dusk is looking for deer on the runway, the IFD went to full brightness about ten seconds before touchdown, severely impacting my ability to see the runway in the dark. I understand that this may have been to call attention to the bogus terrain warning, but it is completely unacceptable for an instrument to go to full brightness in a dark cockpit environment moments before a night landing.

Is there some way to add specific private airports to the database, or to disable the extremely unsafe and distracting change in brightness?  

In the meantime, I suppose I can power off the IFD before landing and use the #2 radio, but that seems like an undesirable workaround.

Thanks,

Miles


Edited by mileserickson - 27 Mar 2015 at 12:40am
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mileserickson View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mileserickson Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Mar 2015 at 12:46am
I just found this in the Pilot Guide: 

"To designate a user waypoint as an airfield, the waypoint must be manually named using the following format “AIRPORT XXXXXFT” where XXXX is the field’s elevation and note that the space is critical in naming the point."

I'll give this a try tomorrow and will report whether or not it was successful. In general, I would prefer to have complete coverage of private airports if there's a way to enable or subscribe to that. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote MysticCobra Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Mar 2015 at 8:40am
The lighting issue is probably related to your settings.  You can have the box configured so that it dims according to input from the built-in ambient light sensor to a certain point, and then when the sensor falls below a specified dark threshold, it hands over dimming control to your panel dimmer knob.  If the panel dimmer is set to a higher brightness (or the wiring is not correct, or some other misconfig), then it's possible for the unit to gradually dim and then suddenly transition to "bright".
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote PA20Pacer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Mar 2015 at 9:07am
Hi Miles-

Hopefully, you will get a more definitive answer, but I can say that we see private airports on the IFD540. We are based at LL22, and never have any alerts when operating there. If the airports on which you have received alerts are grass, you might check the settings on the airport filter on the MAP SETUP page to ensure that Runway Surface is set to "Any". Fuel availability is another factor that could be set to exclude some airports. Let us know what you find.

Regards,

Bob
Bob Siegfried, II
Brookeridge Airpark (LL22)
Downers Grove, IL
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AviJake Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Mar 2015 at 8:42am
All excellent points.  

To the extent that private airfields are part of the Jepp database, they are included in the IFD540.     Bob's note about your map filter settings is an excellent one.   If you've checked the filters and find they are set in a manner that should display/use them and still no dice, then you have two more courses of action you can take.

First, you can create your field to be a user waypoint and tag it as an airfield via the mentioned method in the 2nd post above.  Be sure to use the exact naming convention as described in the PG to include that critical space and FT letters.  If done correctly, that will create a no-known-runway-orientation airfield depiction and stop FLTA alerts.

Second, and some folks on this forum have done so, you can work with Jepp to add that private airfield to their database.  They have a process to do so but I'm not familiar enough with the details of that to comment on what that process is, how long it might take and if there is an expense associated with it.


As for your brightness issue, if that hasn't been resolved yet, it can be.  It's almost certainly due to how you have your lighting setup page configured in Maintenance Mode.  If you can, go to that page in Mx Mode and take a snapshot of the page settings and send them to me or Avidyne Tech Support and we can walk you through some suggested changes.  There is also a description (albeit complex) of those settings in the Installation Manual if you can get your hands on that.
Steve Jacobson
sjacobson@avidyne.com
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BobsV35B Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Mar 2015 at 11:58am

Good Morning All,


As I am usually far behind the power curve anytime a computer is involved, this may be way off base, but as Bob II noted, we have found most local private fields to be in our database, but that may be because most of the local ones do have an IFR approach. There is at least one private field within a few minutes flying time which does not have an IFR approach. The next time I go flying I will see what happens there. Make any sense at all?


Old Bob

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