Mitty wrote:
Garmin has a free simulator and free downloads of the
manuals from their web site. Get the sim and the manuals
and you can learn the box in maybe 5 hours. Enough to get
started flying with it and certainly enough to evaluate it
thoroughly. You should have someone who knows the 430 in
the right seat for the first few flights IMHO.


I cannot emphasize enough how much their simulator helped me get comfortable
with the 430. Not only can you set it up to initialize from your home airport,
you can goose the throttle all the way up to 600 knots so the enroute portion of
your practice flights can be accelerated.

Since I only fly rental aircraft these days, the radios seem to vary widely in
each one available to me. One thing that has become almost universal among the
rental fleet where I live is the Garmin 430. I had been out of flying for
almost 15 years and learned on steam gauges. The Garmin was very intimidating
initially... but the simulator fixed that. And it's free!

http://www.garmin.com/software/simulators/TRAIN430.EXE




--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE