Peter wrote … You don’t get asked to intercept Airway X123… thats exactly what I said to the passenger having left the airways chart in the back of the aircraft… 5 minutes later London told me to ‘maintain present heading, intercept M189 to NEVIL’.
Now its always in the front!
Asking ATC for a waypoint or heading is quicker than figuring out an airway and intercepting that, especially since it only happens once every 2 years in Europe… Also SkyDemon has a very usable airway depiction so no need for any maps.
Peter wrote:
The system seems to use a previously undocumented means of loading the route into the GNS, over an RS232 port – this being enabled by a firmware upgrade. It doesn’t appear to use the crossfill bus.It’s an interesting move by Garmin, to give extra life to the old GNS boxes, and eat a big bit of Avidyne’s lunch which is largely based on the IFD boxes being plug-in replacements for the GNS boxes. I am sure that if it wasn’t for Avidyne, Garmin would have dropped all upgrades for the GNS boxes by now.
The interface is new and was added with GNS530W software version 5.20. This interface is proprietary, but Garmin has shared it with ForeFlight (whom I am a consultant to) and to Jeppesen. This was announced the week before Oshkosh. I have had a FlightStream 210 installed in my aircraft and it interfaces to my GNS530W, GDL88, and GDL69A. I am part of the ForeFlight test team for this capability. In the US, the GDL88 provides weather and traffic. ForeFlight has supported this since version 7.2. They also announced future support for the GNS/W and GTN to exchange flightplans in both directions. I have a pre-release version on my iPad and have flown with it on my way to and from Oshkosh. It is a great feature. I was able to use it on my flight from KUZA to the Oshkosh area to avoid weather. It was obvious on departure that my cleared route would take me directly thru some nasty convective activity. So I used ForeFlight to rubber band around the weather and requested a clearance change and was able to provide specific fixes that I wished to fly. It was granted immediately, and it was a simple “send to panel” and my GPS had its new route. So did the autopilot with GPSS, which flew the deviation flawlessly.
Garmin has been very supportive of its older avionics systems and recently added ADS-B support for its discontinued GNS480. There must still be over a 100,000 GNS430/530 units in aircraft and Garmin has continued to add features such as the support for the FS210 to those customers, even though these products have been discontinued for some time. The GTN has many features that can’t be easily ported to the older technology, but Garmin has other products they wish to sell and that interface to the GNS and GTN series, such as the G500/600, the GTX330ES, the GDL88 and GDL69, and many many more. So keeping the GNS series in the loop is in their interest, irrespective of the competition, which to be honest, just isn’t that big of an impact as of yet. Garmin also announced the addition of support for the RF leg type in the GTN series. I asked a senior Garmin person if it was going to be retrofitted for the GNS/W series and he said it would be in the next software update.
spirit49 wrote:
I have followed some FS210 discussions on other forums, where members have been in touch with the Garmin Pilot App team. They seem like a bunch that are out to kill ForeFlight, and are really keen on developing this app into the future.
Well it turns out that that did not happen. :)
Garmin sold a lot of new hardware as a direct result of their partnership with ForeFlight. GP will not go away either.
NCYankee wrote:
Well it turns out that that did not happen. :)
Well it seems like I was very wrong on this point.
I think this is a very smart move for Garmin. Maybe they can avoid going down the Bendix King road.
King went down the plughole because most people left the company. I think a lot went to Garmin, in the 1990s (after which King stopped developing new products) and a lot just retired.
And nobody in management cared. From my comms with them, I think they were all too old to want to do new stuff, so long after Apollo (they heyday).
That was 15+ years ago… they make money out of making their good old cash cows (like the KX155A/165A radios) and from selling thousands of KFC225 servos, at a trade price of about $3k each, to replace the ones which burn out (that problem was never fixed and you can guess why).
I’ve been using FS210 for a few months, just VFR. The Connext GPS and flight plan data transfer between GTN650 and Garmin Pilot is flawless, and panel-mounted above the 650, the iPad Mini has been a reliable and flexible multi function device.
However, GP’s databases and airspace presentation are way behind EasyVFR and SkyDemon for European VFR, so I hope that one of those two companies will do the necessary deal with Garmin to use their Connext/FS210 interface.
Does anyone know why only Garmin Pilot and Foreflight can connect to this?
Apart from a restrictive practice by Garmin, could there be a reason – especially for Europe – where the tablet app has to contain some complete list of waypoints? This thread on a voice control product might contain a clue; that company could not cover Europe unless you paid (or possibly unless you were already paying) for a Jepp subscription for the relevant geographical area (very expensive for Europe).
Apart from a restrictive practice by Garmin…
It cannot possibly be true that SD and EVFR are effectively locked-out of Garmin’s Connext system. It can only be that they have chosen not to participate.
There is no doubt that Garmin holds a “dominant position” in the context of Title VII, Chapter 1, Section 1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, so if the European app developers want to access any “closed” protocol, they have only to ask Garmin or, if necessary, the European Commission. The latter course of action wouldn’t cost them a bean – it’s what we pay taxes for.
Peter wrote:
Does anyone know why only Garmin Pilot and Foreflight can connect to this?
They probably just don’t care. In making it compatible with ForeFlight and of course their own offering, they cover their home base and the dominant product (by far) in the dominant market (the US).
