G1000 flight planning

[Fuji Abound]

With a little time on the G1000 I would be interested in anyones views on the flight planning aspect.

I ask because I now feel very compfortable with all other aspects of its operation which are imo very intuitive.

However I feel less comfortable with flight planning on the go so to speak.

All the FPL functions are pretty much controlled by the FMS button and dual rotary nobs (with occasional use of the enter key and soft keys). These enable FPs to be saved, retrieved, active legs to be changed or replaced etc.

However the button pushing turning sequence does not always seem that intuitive and given that in flight ideally it should be at its intuitive best I find it a bit more of a struggle.

Is it just me or is their a knack to it?

[IO540]

AFAIK every "IFR GPS" has the same data entry method, using the two concentric rotary buttons. One moves the cursor and the other selects the character A-Z, 0-9 etc.

The characters presented are, I believe, limited to actual identifiers so if you are entering the last char of say ORTAC and you are on ORTAA and there is no ORTAB in the database then the next character presented after the A will be C and not B.

The G1000 has the exceedingly desirable FMS-style keypad entry option but only Lancair (AFAIK) has offered this.

[Fuji Abound]

Yes, but having entered a FP lets suppose you want to change the active leg

FPR hard key activates the FP, inner rotary selects the leg, menu hard key activates the leg

however to enter a W/P

range hard key selects and moves to position, enter hard key now selects, and FMS hard key finally stores and returns to map.

I suppose it is the combination of when to use ENT, MENU and FMS hard key that seems counter intuitive on the 1000.

[denhamflyer]

Its not just you - I agree it could be better. I find that when regularly flying it all comes automatically - BUT I do find that leave a gap I turn / press the wrong buttons a couple of times (luckily the design is robust enough to handle this kind of error).

When I first started - I was too cautious. In reality its best to actually do it and it does become a lot easier.

Last time I had not flow for a while I loaded up the simulator and entered a few plans just to get back into the swing of things before going up. All other parts seem very consistent!