Avidyne Support is Excellent and the IFD550 is amazingly powerful. The upload and download design of this equipment is not very well thought out, however, and is a risk for the end user. I’ll discuss two features that I’ll call out on this product. The most pressing is the Update and Download process, but there is also the UTC Mismatch issue that pilots need to better understand (maybe you do already).
Updates/Downloads: In late May of this year, I was waiting in line at the fuel pump and doing a chart update while I waited. For some reason, the charts weren’t updating and this would be my third try. Later I would find out that Boeings MAC App downloaded the charts to my MAC, but didn’t transfer the update to my key fob. I missed that.
My turn came at the pump, and I needed the power to be OFF to the airplane. I made the bone headed decision to turn off the power during the third try to update my charts, full well knowing that the book says not to do this. In my defense, your computer also says don’t pull out a key fob before properly ejecting it, but nobody ever died from doing that.
Well, I can tell you this – DO NOT TURN OFF THE POWER TO YOUR RADIO WHILE UPLOADING OR DOWNLOADING ANYTHING! Interrupting power during an update is fatal to the radio. I ended up spending $500-$600 in travel and labor to have the radio restored by the avionics shop.
After getting the radio restored, I spent another several days on the phone trying to get the configuration right, so that the weather would transfer and cross talk would happen. I’ve since done a thorough job of documenting all of the configuration settings my airplane needs, just in case I have to go through this again. I covered most of this in my June 4th post, so I won’t repeat what I said there. Other than to say that this is not the first time a shop has made a mistake that could have killed me, given different circumstances.
Recently, on August 23rd, I’m coming back from my annual and the radio configuration issues have been resolved. The only thorn in my side is that I’m seeing a UTC Mismatch error pop up again. You cannot fly with this, or the radio will fail into Dead Reckoning mode. I’d seen this before on every flight, and had to have my radio replaced.
The UTC Mismatch is what led me to download logs for Avidyne Support. I have a solution for that and a better understanding. I’d like to talk about the update process first, however.
Updating the IFD550 requires that you rely on external power. This process exposes you to bricking the radio if the power is lost for any reason. Watch it carefully.