GPS (430-530) Tutorials

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GPS (430-530) Tutorials



The articles are written by Voidhawk9. Voidhawk9 is not only a real life flight instructor in New Zealand, he is also a true X-Plane expert. He knows everything about X-Plane, planemaker and has designed countless high-tech custom aircraft for X-Plane over the years.He is the perfect person to translate real-life aviation experience to X-Plane. Voidhawwk9 is the owner of X-Aerodynamics

This short series will teach you what the X-plane (Garmin) 430w / 530w is, what it does, and how to operate it. The Garmin 430 is a very popular GPS receiver, and the adoption of these and similar units throughout aviation is rendering older radio navigation aids -such as NDBs and VORs- redundant. Once you learn to use this technology, it will revolutionize the way you navigate in X-plane!

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01 - Introduction to using the X-plane / Garmin 430w


 
What is a GPS?

The Garmin 430w / 530w is a ‘GPS’ for aircraft use. If you have been living under a rock for the past 20 years, GPS stands for ‘Global Positioning System’ and describes the system of satellites and receivers used for global, high accuracy navigation. It works anywhere that provides for radio signals to reach satellites, so basically anywhere except under the aforementioned rock.

GPS devices are popular for many uses, including:

•   Aircraft navigation (obviously!)
•   ‘Satnav’ devices in cars
•   Finding your way hiking in the wilderness


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02 - Navigation and Flight Planning


 
 From the previous lesson, you should have gained some familiarity with the general layout of the device and how to operate it’s basic functions. This time will will delve deeper into it’s functions as a navigation and flight plan following tool.

 
The Default NAV Page

This is the first, default page, which can be dialled in using the right side knobs to the left (First GROUP, first PAGE). It can also be accessed by pressing CLR for a few seconds on other pages.



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03 - Approaches, Waypoints, and Nearest 



From the previous lesson, you should have gained some familiarity with the general layout of the device and how to operate it’s basic functions. This time will will delve deeper into it’s functions as a navigation and flight planning tool.

This is the final lesson of the series. It's not exhaustive (otherwise there would be many more lessons and you'd probably get bored), but you should learn enough to be able to use just about any included function with relative ease.

Approaches
You know how to use the system to navigate point to point, now we can use the system to help us finish the flight.

You can load approach procedures onto the end of your flight plan to enable accurate navigation basically right onto the runway! The 430 / 530 isn't a super-autopilot, however, you will still have to actually pilot the aircraft.

Access these features by pressing PROC.

While the real 430 / 530 can provide guidance on departures, arrivals (SIDs and STARs), and approaches, the X-plane version supports only approaches at this time.

Procedures will be made available for the destination airport, if such procedures are available in the dataset (not all airports are supported by the default installation). Obviously, you therefore need to have a destination airport, using either a flight plan, or the Direct-To function.




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04 - GPS Discussion


This thread is open for discussing using the GPS in X-plane, and anything relating to the above lessons.


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