iFly GPS Forum

I've been thinking about upgrading my VHF radio transceiver and noticed the ICOM A220 has a feature called GPS Memory Channel. On the 220's Product Description webpage is the following line:

"A pilot with the A220 connected to an external GPS receiver can pick up the local tower frequencies and automatically store them into the radios memory. This makes for a hands free safe transaction."

http://www.icomamerica.com/en/product...20/default.aspx

Is this a function the iFly 740 supports? If so, what steps are needed to make this work?

Thanks,

Andre'

Thanks Walter. Referencing the A220's instruction manual, it further states "refer to the GPS receiver's instruction manual for transferring frequency data." I believe the A220 is relying on the GPS for the airport/tower database info. Assumming the 740 and A220 do communicate via RS-232/NMEA, is there a button push/command on the iFly that could generate/send this info once selected by the pilot?

Andre'

Walter -

I sent an email to ICOM and received the following reply:

"The way the radio is populated via the GPS is that the GPS unit you would be using would have the Jeppersen's database loaded on it (usually via a SD Card). The GPS unit would send that data along with the GPS data to the radio. The radio in turn would populate the GPS memories/standby memory in a rolling fashion during your flight. Pins 7 and 8 would be your GPS connection. You will have to use a GPS unit that has a NMEA 0183 output with a connection speed of 4800 baud."

The ICOM A-220 installation manual indicates for the rear connector, pin 6 is ground, pin 7 is serial data OUT and pin 8 is serial data IN.

I then called ICOM tech support and asked for further clarification on the NMEA sentence string structure and was told it uses NMEA-FSI.

Does this help?

Thanks,

Andre'