AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2020 - 32

PILOT BRIEFING
2020 SWEEPSTAKES

|

Time to enter the clouds
Your AOPA Sweepstakes RV-10 takes the IFR plunge
B Y D AV E H I R S C H M A N

32 | AOPA PILOT January 2020

and Avidyne, and it's had a fresh IFR pitotstatic check, the time finally was right to
wade into actual instrument conditions.
On a gloomy, rainy morning with cloud
bases reported at 900 feet agl, I loaded an
IFR clearance into the Avidyne IFD550 at
AOPA's home base in Frederick, Maryland,
and headed for Nashua, New Hampshire,
with AOPA Air Safety Institute Executive
Director Richard McSpadden.
We loaded the complex route into
the Avidyne IFD550 and it drew the airways route along the busy west sides of
Philadelphia and New York City. The
Avidyne IFD550 is the nerve center of the
RV-10's avionics system, and the highly
capable box is new to me. I had read the
manual, practiced loading and modifying
IFR flight plans on the ground, and flown
a few approaches in visual conditions. But
it wasn't until I took Gary Reeves' online
course (pilotsafety.org) that I really felt up
to speed on this brainy box.

Like so many of today's pilots, I'm
steeped in Garmin logic, and the products
that come out of Olathe, Kansas, intrinsically make sense to me. After watching
Reeves' videos and listening to his explanations of the ideas behind the IFD system,
however, it had a powerful logic all its own,
as well as some slick features. In particular,
the IFD's ability to "GeoFill" the next waypoint or airway in an IFR flight plan saves
times and helps eliminate silly mistakes.
On flights going west, for example, the
first waypoint is usually Martinsburg, West
Virginia. Other GPS units ask you to clarify
whether you mean the VOR just 26 miles
away, or the one in South America that goes
by the same code. The IFD550 figures that
out for you without asking.
With the flight plan loaded, we took off
and headed to New England. McSpadden
followed the guidance on the colorful primary flight display by Advanced Flight
Systems, and then engaged the Dynon

CHRIS ROSE

THIS MAY BE SURPRISING given the longrange, time-zone-spanning trips the AOPA
2020 Sweepstakes Van's RV-10 has made
since arriving from Canada, but it's true: Until
recently, the RV-10 hadn't flown in clouds or
made a real-life instrument approach since
AOPA acquired it in early 2019.
The airplane had a purely VFR panel
when it came to AOPA, and it was flown
that way on the daylong wintertime journey from Saskatchewan to Maryland; a
summer trip from Maryland to South
Florida for a new interior; and from there
to Wisconsin for its big reveal at EAA
AirVenture. It came back to the East Coast
on a sunny day. Even a 1,000-nauticalmile roundtrip flight from Maryland to
Tullahoma, Tennessee, for the final AOPA
Fly-In of the year was made in purely visual
conditions.
But now that the bright yellow RV-10 is
equipped with a three-screen, digital IFR
panel courtesy of Advanced Flight Systems
http://www.pilotsafety.org
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2020

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