

On the Garmin 530 you have a 4th column of data so I would suggest that the third column be DIS (individual leg distances) and again the 4th column be ETE. The second and third column can be different things, but I find the most useful are DTK (individual course lines on the flight plan), ETE for hours: minutes: seconds remaining at those waypoints. The first column cannot be changed, as that is the list of waypoints.

The Flight Plan page has 3 columns for the Garmin 430 and 4 columns for the Garmin 530. Errors in switchology can lead to substantial heads-down time in the airplane at first, which is the last thing you want to deal with. In fact, it makes sense to do that before attempting it in the airplane, unless you take along another pilot. You can practice these suggestions with the Garmin 430 flight simulator, available for free download from the Garmin web site. Sure, theyre in the manual somewhere, but weve mined these nuggets for you in the interest of keeping you safe and violation-free. We dont aim to reproduce the manual here, only to supply you with useful tricks that have immediate real-world application.

If you dont, the Garmin documentation is pretty good about explaining how to do that.

Some of these lessons presume you have some experience in entering and activating flight plans. To help you get there, here are a few more tricks for operating the Garmin 430 in a dynamic environment, either IFR or VFR. It takes a substantial amount of experience to get used to the operating logic, but the truly challenging task is learning all of the capabilities that lie within those submenus. The compromise is menus and submenus, with buttons and switches taking on different roles depending on what menu is active. Even the sophisticated (for its day) KNS-80 RNAV receivers were units that could be used to their full capability with an hour or two of practice.Īdvanced avionics pack a lot of function into a small unit. Before GPS, avionics were fairly simple devices. Judging from the feedback we got from Februarys installment on getting the most out of a Garmin 430, its apparent that many operators are merely scratching the surface of what the box can accomplish.
