Flying the Heading bug - D180

[SammyQ2]

I now have about 20 hours of flight time on my D180.  I absolutely love it.

I have a question about flying the  heading. I am using the standard EFIS screen, with engine parameters on the right, so I'm not looking at the HSI.

I am getting input from the GPS and it shows the course, the heading, and the little magenta ground track arrow.  At the bottom of the screen I see the magenta CDI.

My question is, how do you pull all of these together to keep heading?  It seems like I have to turn in the direction of the correction to get the CDI centered, then when I actually get it centered, I then fly the ground track arrow and "drag" it over to the course heading V.

Is there a way you guys/gals do this keep on heading?  I think it's kind of awkward and I'm always searching for the right heading.  Unless I'm dong it wrong, you have t look at the CDI at the bottom of the screen, then switch my gaze to the heading indicator.  Why can't this all be on one place?

In other brands, I have seen a little track arrow.  All you have to do is fly to the arrow.  As you get back on course, the arrow moves toward the heading.  It seems to be much simpler.

Looking for any input.  Am I missing something?

Thanks.

Sam

 

[Brantel]

When the CDI is centered all you have to do to keep it that way is fly a heading that puts the GPS Ground Track indicator (Arrowhead) inside of the Course Indicator (Magenta V).

Both the Ground Track indicator and Course indicator must be turned on in the Clutter menu.

 

[PhantomPholly]

Just in case that was answering the wrong question:

If your goal is to fly a magnetic heading, set the heading bug and simply keep it in the middle of the heading band at the top of the EFIS display.

As the other poster said, keeping the CDI course arrow centered will allow you to follow ground track.

 

[dynonsupport]

The situation where they are all in one place is the HSI. But clearly this takes up a lot of space.

But I'm not sure what you mean that other EFIS units have an arrow that shows you where to go. All the ones I am aware of do what we do (or less). Do you have a screen shot of what you are asking about?

 

[SammyQ2]

I'm not going to be at the airport for a few days so I can't take a photo of mine.  All I could find on the web was this photo of a Garmin GPSMap196, which is what I have.  It's not real clear in the photo, but see the little grey tick mark, just to the left of the arrow??  As Garmin describes in in the 196 manual:
A bug provides information to bring you back to course, if you stray off course.  

I think it's a great tool.  All you have to do is to fly to the tick mark, in a standard rate turn.  No CDI, no ground track - it's much simpler.  You lock onto the tick mark, then as you approach your original course line it moves towards the center.  I'll see if I can get a better photo in a couple of days.

 

[Brantel]

I think you are refering to the COURSE TO STEER indicator....

That is sort of a flight director type function.

I do not think NMEA GPS's output this data in their datastream.