FS Garmin for X-Plane & MSFS 2002

By John Mundie

The Fs Garmin 430 & 530 by Sim Systems Pty are fully functional flight sim versions of the Garmin 430 & 530 GPS NAV\COM moving maps. If you have never seen or heard of the real Garmins then head over to www.garmin.com. There is an excellent review \ tutorial available at www.avweb.com . One of these babies will set you back about $14,000! Be assured this is a serious piece of hardcore IFR kit.

Purchase and installation......

Fs Garmin can be purchased via download at www.fsavionics.com and each unit is about a 23 MB download in total. Also available for download are the actual, real world Garmin manuals which are essential reading (all 200+ pages!) They are priced at $35 for the 530 and $ 25 for the 430 with discounts if you buy both. They are “try before you buy” products and will run for about 30 minutes before requiring you to re – start your simulator before you can use them again. Installation and setup for both the MSFS and X-P versions is a breeze, the only user intervention required is a small change to the .ini file if you want to run the Garmin over a network.

FEATURES.....

Here is a quick look at some of the highlights of this amazing piece of electronic wizardry:

MOVING MAP

Worldwide land use map including major roads , rivers coastlines etc.

Worldwide aviation database \ map.

There are also two Jeppesen databases included one for the US and one for international (rest of world).

Here is a screenshot of my home airport Aberdeen , Scotland and as you can see some madman has classed the A96 as a major road! This IS the road from hell! Are those roads and rivers present in MSFS & XP? Most of them are blurrily visible in FS and the roads are there in XP but most of the smaller rivers are missing due to Austin Meyer making an %#@ of his “Next-Gen scenery”!

NAV\COM Radio.....

But I already have all the NAV\COM radios I need I hear you say? Ah, but you don’t have one like this! No more looking up and writing down frequencies with this little beauty. From your flight plan or from a direct to, or by nearest facility, or by opening the waypoints page and dialing in the facility you need, you can access all of the available frequencies. For instance, if you place the cursor in the ATIS field in the screen below and then press enter the frequency, it is transferred into the standby window of the GNS com. By simply pressing the com flip flop keys it is then transferred straight to your FS radio, Great stuff!

FLIGHT PLANNING.....

 The GNS can hold 20 flight plans in its internal memory and after a READ OF THE MANUAL flight planning is really a breeze. Although these are incredibly complex units the Garmin programmers have to be congratulated for making them so easy to use. Of course, there is a learning curve but you will find this unit really easy to pick up.

As part of the Jeppesen database come approaches arrivals and departures for all airports that have a Jeppesen plate associated with them. No more fumbling around with paper charts? Perhaps, but you should have the paper ones to hand as well. The Garmin will remind you of this every time you load an approach. The Garmin will guide you through all phases of the approach including holding patterns , procedure turns missed approaches etc. I will even instruct you on the recommended entry pattern into a hold nice!

At the present time the FS Garmin can not load a MSFS created flight plan. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that but there are some on the forums who don’t like “all that twiddling of knobs”. The developer has hinted that this feature could be implemented in the future.

OTHER FEATURES......

VNAV

Vertical guidance, time to descend etc you can build a fairly complex vertical path into your flight plan. This unit IS the FMC of the GA world. Actually it’s a LOT simpler to use than any FMC I have ever come across.

AUTO FLIGHT

This is one of the few areas where the FS Garmin differs from the real unit. In order to use the autopilot with the FS Garmin you must press shift & click on the FPL button with an active to waypoint. The Garmin will then engage the autopilot in HDG mode and drive the HDG bug for you. At the moment it does not have the capability to couple to your HSI \ OBI but as a responsible pilot you should be using your nav radios as backup right? Again, the developer has hinted they they are looking into this.

Hotkeys

You can configure it to use a key press or joystick button for any button\knob. Goflight anyone?

Auto-zoom

Auto zooms for use during enroute \ approach etc...

Resizing

Can be run at 50 100 150 or 200% of normal size.

There are many more features to this serious piece of kit and I would highly recommend downloading the free Garmin user manuals and having a read. The Garmin manuals ARE the FS Garmin manuals, the flight sim bit takes about 12 pages compared to 200+ for the real manuals.

Ahhh, good old X- Plane. This screen shot is showing the 430 FS Garmin menu

This shot shows X-Plane in map mode. The supplied Jeppesen database is the real world database, it is NOT generated from the flight simulator database. Some in the forums have thought that there may be a problem with this as apparently there are some airports within the X Plane database that are not positioned where they should be. I have not come across this myself, the Garmin leading me right to the threshold every time.

ISSUES.....

On Initial release about a month ago there were some issues with win 9x PC’s locking up and some instances of Win XP PC’s not correctly initialising their position correctly. These have now all been fixed. There is also an issue with the 430 not changing database properly. Aapparently there is a fairly simple work around for this and the developer is working on a permanent fix. At the moment you are unable to run two instances of the Garmins at once, ie one 430 + one 530 or two 430’s but again, this is being looked into.

 430 or 530?

Which one should you get?  Apart from the obvious size there is not that much difference in operation of the two units. Obviously with its larger screen the 530 can offer more info on one page than the 430 can. Personally I would recommend the 430 for running on the same screen as FS and the 530 for running remotely over a network although the 530 can easily  be used on the same pc as FS using the show\hide keys.

WHAT I LIKE MOST ABOUT THESE PRODUCTS.....

The Jeppesen database

The land use database

Ease of use

Flight planning and direct to capabilities

Arrivals departures and approaches

Configurability – You can configure the maps and data fields to show just about anything imaginable

The nav\com radios, frequency database and its implementation into your flight sim.

Excellent support future development – Sim Systems have a proven track record of support and on-going development\enhancement of their products with their flagship product FS Flightmax (www.fsflightmax.com)

THINGS NOT SO GOOD.....

Use of the Simulator autopilot could use some improvements, ie the ability to link to FS HSI \ CDI