Paul Folbrecht wrote:
I am doing some preliminary planning of the panel for my RV-9A and
wondering if a 2nd nav is really a necessity with a GNS 430 in the
panel. Seems to me that flying IFR GPS, with mostly GPS approaches in
the near future, I should not have much need for a 2nd VOR receiver to
identify intersections - obviously the GPS does that itself and the 430
does have one nav radio built-in.

Only problematic area I can think of are the cases where 2 VOR receivers
are pretty much necessary - to identify FAFs on ILS, LOC, and VOR (no
GPS overlay) approaches. I release that ILS's almost always have an OM
anyway and VOR IAPs w/no GPS overlay become scarcer by the month. With
WAAS.. much less of a problem all around (WAAS precision approaches).

If I decide I can do without another nav I save $2000 going with a SL-40
(com only) vs a SL-30 (nav/com).

Interesting in hearing from people with 430s (and up) how they are
flying the things.

(As for navigating with the 430 tango uniform - there's ATC vectors &
the backup handheld GPS.)


The 430 has separate VOR/GS recievers and GPS. As this group has discussed,
they are really separate inside the box, as in don't share any circuitry.
The points of failure, however, would be the power in and the display.
However, the display, if it packs in, would leave the VOR running on
the last frequency you set, but without any capability to change it.

Me, I left the original Cessna VOR in, and didn't upgrade to glideslope
on it.