Good idea in general for any navigator - load the approach including the IAF. When cleared to the IAF, activate the approach, and it will sequence. If vectored, activate VTF. Works every time.
There’s a weird logic to it.It does one of three things. Assume a basic “hold south.”
You will discover this is not universal. At my airport, the HILPT stays in place no matter what direction you come from. And it doesn't ask if I want the hold. First time it happened to me when they updated our approaches I was scratching my head. Then my CFII was scratching his head during an IPC with me. I have seen what you describe on approaches to other airports.
Interesting. If it's the two approaches into VGC, I'm seeing what I expect in the trainer. (October 2024 database)
We used to refer to that as the “Pass/Fail Button”.
Maybe. Maybe not. Since avionics transitions are something of a specialty for me I've seen people for whom this stuff is fairly "intuitive" and can self-teach with a few tips (I typically assign videos) and those who get confused because there are 3 different techniques to accomplish the same task. Unless you are one of the former, the guidance of a CFI at the beginning will avoid getting into bad habits that will make training take longer.
Mike's series is excellent.
My GNS430W doesn't do this. Flown these approaches dozens and dozens of times from various directions.
Strange. I wonder… Garmin or Jepp database? I can’t think of why there would be a difference, but there might be. I know the Avidyne inserts it without asking, so maybe a database thing?
Garmin database. I know the 430 data cards are pretty small. They have on occasion limited which approaches are loaded i to the database. When our approaches were first deployed, Garmin did not include them in the first couple of cycles.
Yeah, this is one of the Achilles heels on the 430 series. You can't load an approach unless it's the last airport in your flight plan. My home airport has a MDA close to 1800 AGL due to mountains in the traffic pattern. I would frequently do approaches there knowing a missed was likely. I wanted to program the alternate and it's approach also but no dice. I had to do it during the busy missed in mountains.
Real world, you’d most likely have time to add the new destination airport or a fix at the end of the flight plan, get going to it, and have enough time to clean things up and add the rest on the way. Or, ask ATC for delay vectors while you set things up.
I’ve started doing this with the GTN lately. My ‘normal’ approach currency flight is to fly to airport A, go missed to hold then load the next approach for my alternate while in the hold.
I’m going to try that on the sim.
Thx. This is something I didn’t even know was a thing. Never saw it during training and just never discovered it in-flight. I’ll work on learning that, maybe later today.
Where it really comes into its own is when you think your destination will be below your minimums. Once you decide on the real alternate you will use, you can set it up while workload is low.
Matthew, small clarification. GNS or GTN? Cataloging works for both, but @TCAMB's comment about loading during the missed only applies to GTN. Even there, it's pretty limited. You have to already be in the published missed hold. Depending where you fly, just being on the published missed can be a rarity. Even when I have gotten the published hold for real, I've never made it into the hold unless I asked for it.
GTN 650.
There are differences in capability (ability to enter airways; painting random holds, etc) and the touchscreen means certain functions will be accessed a bit differently, but the basic Garmin logic and flow hasn't changed much since the GPSMap handhelds.
