First flight with IFD440s

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   I flew with my new IFD 440s today for the first time. They generally worked well, but I had a few issues - some of which I have now learnt more about by reading the manual, but which were not intuitively obvious at the time.
1) The map was stuck in North up orientation - which is not even one of the options in the setup. I tried heading up and track up in the user setup with no success. I now read in the manual that North up toggles by pressing the bottom right knob. I did not figure that out in flight.

2) The "Class C ahead" alerts drove me crazy. Firstly, I was IFR so it wasn't an issue, but some of them were spurious, e.g. immediately after takeoff I got an alert because there is class C at 1500 ft. I wasn't going to enter that, but it alerted me anyway, which is not what I needed at the time. A little later I went into the setup to try to turn those off, but could not do so. I now read in the manual that there is a "setup FMS" selection, but this was not available in flight, only "User options", and the only thing I could do there was toggle the audible alert, not the CAS alert. I don't have the plane handy today to check this on the ground but will do so tomorrow.

3) Entering user waypoints was complicated by the fact that the numeric keypad presentation hides most of the data field that is being edited.

4) What I really loved was flying a GPS approach. Here in Oz we have no WAAS so there are no LNAV/VNAV or LPV approaches, but I got LNAV+V on a GPS approach, and the FMS view shows the altitude limitations for the fixes - apart from briefing the MDA and missed approach, I did not need to look at the approach chart. From the FAF I got a glideslope on the PFD and flew it as a coupled approach - just magic.

5) The COM frequency selection was good, but not quite as good as I expected. Twisting the knob brings up a list of frequencies, but half the time the one I wanted wasn't in there - the departure frequency, some en-route centre frequencies, and the destination AWIS did not appear - but once I dialled them in I did get the text saying what they were, so they are in the database somewhere.

6) The IFDs get very hot! They were in sunlight and remained completely readable, unlike the 430s that get a white cast when hot, but both the screen and the sides of the bezel got hot enough that touching them was unpleasant. I am somewhat surprised by this - I expected them to run cooler than the 430s.

7) Some of the touch-sensitive fields are quite small and it's easy to press the wrong thing. The knobs are more useful than I expected.

8) I could not find anywhere to display GPS status - i.e. satellites in view and use. Not essential I suppose, but I've had issues with other equipment where this information has been useful so I don't see why it's absent.

9) The COM radio is quite loud. On the ground I found I needed the volume turned down to only one click above silent. Needed a little more in the air, but it does seem to be louder than the 430s were.

I still have to decide how to set up the datablocks, and whether I want the crossfill enabled - I liked having the 430s set up so crossfill worked one way only - this is apparently not an option with the IFDs. I had the installer disable the crossfill, but I can see some advantages in having it on.

So far I'm very pleased. No doubt once I read the manuals and get things configured better I'll be even happier.