The 430/530 do not meet the WAAS TSO (146a, I believe). They were designed
long before this TSO went final. Garmin always said the 430/530 would be
"upgradeable", but I think the final TSO caught them by surprise.

You WILL need a hardware upgrade in the boxes to provide the 1 Hz refresh
rate required by the TSO. Garmin reps at OSH this year stated the upgrade
should be available early next year, but based upon Garmin's typical
schedule challenges, it will probably be more like late 04 before they can
provide good turn-around, and that's assuming they don't find any "issues"
with the hardware upgrade...

There will be a significant software upgrade as well.

Seeing as there are only a handfull of LNAV/VNAV approaches published, I
don't see the hurry in finding the que. I will wait a bit until the hardware
upgrade is on the street for a couple months and any inevitable problems are
worked out...

In the meantime, were I to buy right now, I would probably go for the CNX80,
but I would be concerned that Garmin has just bought UPSAT and future
product support. The "gist" I got from the Garmin reps at OSH was their
entire engineering staff is focused on rolling out the high dollar G-1000,
and everything else is taking a back seat at the moment. Kind of
disappointing, since I was hoping they would come out with an interface for
the 530 with WxWorx instead of that pathetic EchoFlight...

Garmin lost a major auto contract recently because of their high pricing
structure. Don't know how that's going to effect their business model, but I
hope they refocus on their core aviation market.


"Jeff" wrote in message
news:NLLdb.38601$vj2.28144@fed1read06...
the 295 (which I have right now) updates ALOT slower then the 430/530
GPS/COM's, plus its not IFR certified.
The 430/530's are IFR certified and can do alot more. I had put a 430 in my
cherokee 180 and loved it. Nice system. Right now I am considering it for my
new plane, WAAS is not something I need, but from what I understand from
talking to my avionics shop, all that is needed when the WAAS updates come
out is for you to take it to the shop and they will update the software in
it. No big deal, only takes a few minutes.
I dont see sales going down on the 430 or 530, they are really good systems
especially now since you can get the terrain data base for it.

DoodyButch wrote:

I was all ready to order a (wildly popular) Garmin 530 upgrade but now I
have read that these units are not WAAS capable and will need a motherboard
upgrade whenever they develop a WAAS capability, since there are fundamental
problems with the basic refresh rate - see this months Aviation Safety.

WAAS is very important, needless to say, since it increases the accuracy a
lot, and it could save your life. Ironically, the lowly Garmin GPS 295
portable/handheld is WAAS enabled!

At this point, I predict sales of the Garmin 430/530 will deteriorate until
they get WAAS.

I'm waiting.

DB