When I returned something called a GNS430 had become the system of choice. My first thought was that this device needs configuring before you get airborne. There was loads of scope to fiddle in flight, head in cockpit, attention distracted from the primary function of controlling the aircraft. You could also screw settings up big time if the wrong button pushes were made.
A low hour PPL in a high tech machine trying to re-configure the electronics of a high tech device could easily lose the picture.
I think it is widely accepted that these avionics are indeed configured pre-flight.
On a few occassions, e.g. following ground delays but having filed a Eurocontrol IFR flight plan, one departs without loading up the entire route of say 20 waypoints, and then one loads up the waypoints when enroute, on the autopilot. Usually one would still ground-load the initial waypoints especially if e.g. flying a STAR departure, so one can see which way one is supposed to go after getting airborne
Whether this is obvious to a new PPL as it should be obvious to some old-timer, is a different matter. The PPL training business doesn't really teach cockpit procedures and GPS is rarely touched on. I think a lot of people discover this stuff as they go along.
But in this case the pilot should have had ground school on the G1000.
Is that, perhaps, another indication that Europe makes it too onerous to obtain the skills and privileges to do so legally?
Well, yes, obviously, but there are vast establishment interests which have always worked to keep the IR hard to get and they are still there today.
In the meantime we have EASA trying to ground the vast majority of IFR capable pilots, by screwing the IFR/N-reg community into getting the JAA IR with its mad 7-exam ground school. That crude anti-US move is really going to help safety
IMHO, a lot of these pilots will not do the Euro IR but will just fly VFR in IMC. but at least they know how...
BTW it has been suggested on another forum that this pilot may have had more diff training hours than it may appear because some training may have been logged as P1.