Garmin 430 and departures

[simsam]

Hi

I am trying to dive further into the features of Garmin 430.

If you don't have DME and do lets say a radar departure, and need the waypoint to stay on the departure navaid for distance information.

Do you activate the flightplan and just select OBS to avoid automatic sequencing?

Is OBS available if you are using VLOC? When is the SUSP displayed?

Other practical tips for using Garmin 430 are welcome.

Regards

Simsam

[tmpffisch]

IMO it's good airmanship to allow the GPS to sequence to wherever you're flying to, when using it for enroute navigation. If you need a readout of your distance from the navaid, use the nearest page.

You can suspend when using VLOC, easiest to wind your CDI before you do it, rather than having to select the course you want afterwards.

[Captain Nomad]

A quick rotation of the right outer knob will take you across to the 'Nearest' page and you can rotate inner knob to get 'nearest navaid' page. If you are using a nav page you can leave it on that and when you want the distance from the navaid just rotate the knob for a quick look and then go back to your primary page.

[simsam]

Thanks, good idea. And being the closes navaid they stay at the top of the list.

Simsam

[Tinstaafl]

Press the knob to get the cursor to display. Outer knob for Left-Right & inner knob for Up-Down (or visa versa. Buggered if I ever remember until each time I do it). The top of the screen will change to display your distance from the tip of the cursor. Move the cursor to whatever point you're interested in and you'll have a pseudo-DME to that point until you press the knob again to deactivate the function. It'll even highlight points on the map eg navaids, waypoints, airports or whatever is shown as the pointer touches each one so you'll know if the distance is in fact to the feature you want.

I use it all the time doing approaches & arrivals. It's handy to have a ready made distance to say, the threshold or MAPt while still several route segments away.

You can zoom in & out without affecting things other than feature resolution so handy if the feature you want is buried amongst other map features. You can also use the Direct To button if you should want to fly direct to the cursor position. The cursor position can also be turned into a user waypoint by pressing Enter.