Jury is out whether it's worth using for flight plan entry, the screen keyboard works awfully well. However I did go to the trouble attaching it to my iPad yoke mount, I feel like a 747 pilot now.

But is there a way to press the LSK buttons? Things such as activate approach and activate flight plan are frequent needs.

It depends, what software are you using to access the ifd with your Ipad?

I use FlyQ, and it works great.

Love my keyboard. Use it for 95% of my interaction with the IFD. Putting in new frequencies is especially quick and handy. Your hand hardly leaves the yoke.

* Orest

Great idea to clear the CAS messages.

I haven't tried it yet but I do see the FREQ button on there, will try it out.

Side question, since you've read this far - is there a way to scroll down the frequencies offered after you turn the lower left knob to bring them up, both on the keyboard and on the IFD? I haven't tried anything yet but just thought of this issue, I've been using the touch screen to scroll down. Annoyingly, the bottom frequency, the third one in the list, does not respond to a touch unless you scroll it up into full view. And a related issue - why does it take two touches to bring it into standby, why not just one?

I haven't tried the IFD100 - I'm assuming it requires working WiFi connection, I can't even share flight plans with Foreflight yet, I posted a question on that, too.

Orest, you are obviously knowledgable and enthusiastic about the IFDxxx. Just curious, what is the * in your sig?

Mitch

Mitch,

As far as why two touches to bring a frequency into standby is because the first touch selects the frequency from a list (puts the box around it to select it).  The 2nd touch puts it into standby.

Maybe Avidyne people lurk here and note things like that? It's a small thing, it'll become second nature to tap-tap.

Ah, there is a bit of history there.

Going back to the good old Compuserve days (late 1980's), with 9600 baud modems and $60/hr subscription costs, there was a function to auto-format (lines) or not, for messages in one of the offline default editors that was commonly used. Also defined was a "*" to suppress formating on a line by line basis.

I wrote and sold one of the more commonly used add-on message handlers/editors (Recon), and changed the meaning of the * on a line. One gag led to another, and a * got stuck onto my name. Been there ever since.

* Orest

My ".sig" back then was "El Hombre".

That holder is from proclipusa.com. It's a hardwired powered holder for the iPad Mini, lightning cable slips into it and then the other end to a USB power supply behind the panel. I took a piece of "hardboard", cut it precisely to have half of it attached to the back of the iPad holder and the keyboard holder juts out from there. Spray painted it black. It's held in place with nylon locking stainless steel bolts. No issues with freedom of control wheel.

The keyboard is attached with this stuff, way better than Velcro:

Is the glue temperature fast? Most velcro strips make a horrible mess when the glue heats up in the sun, and flows all over.

*Orest

Ah yes, punch cards, FORTRAN IV, COBOL, batch processing, the PDP-11 and such. One comma out of place, and you have to wait two hours for the next run!

* Orest

Ran an IBM 360/20 in the military and afterward.

One keystroke wrong.....start over.