Never intended (or priced) as a slick Broadway production, the 52-page black and white spiral-bound 8×11 manual looks positively primitive propped up beside more up-to-date training aids. Originally published in 2000, The Garmin GNS 530: A Pilot-Friendly Manual was all but alone in providing an inexpensive ($39.95) way to make sense out of Garmins nearly 200-page tome. Theres also at least one paper-only training manual for the 430/530 from ZD Publishing, but its copyright date is the tipoff. Its available at Not nearly as slick or comprehensive as the Pegasus or ElectronicFlight 430/530 trainers, we wouldnt thumb our noses at this one.
Garmin improved this substantially last year with a free downloadable syllabus containing informational and operational exercises for both the sim and inflight training.
When the GNS430 first appeared, there wasnt much self-guided help for fledgling Garmin owners. Whats needed for many of us-and whats available-are programs or manuals for ongoing, high-level avionics training. Sometimes you need the little knob, sometimes the big one, sometimes it wants the Menu key, sometimes Enter, with no consistency apparent to the novice. The operational logic of these navigators isnt what we would call intuitive. While the primary functions of these boxes arent difficult to learn, mastery and recall of the higher tasks can be distressingly fleeting, particularly for those who dont fly every day. A significant percentage of those are dual installations, of course, but thats still a big crowd of individual pilots buzzing around trying to make a nice toy jump through its considerable hoops. Its hard to believe the ceaseless predictions of GAs impending demise when you learn that there are now more than 40,000 Garmin GNC530 and 430 units in the field.
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