homepage Forums SimHQ Community Community Hall Another sign that I’m getting old.

When I first started flying we didn’t have GPS aids. Then the first GPS nav aid, which was an orange line with small breaks and twin vertical lines that showed if you were left or right of your straight line course, came out. Then the first Garmin 430 with moving map, course line, airfields, airspace, etc came out. Now here I am 16 years later and finding out that Garmin considers the 430 and 530 old tech and is going to stop servicing them. Mine needed a refurbishment so I sent it off since they will no longer ensure that they will have the parts to refurbish or repair them after Jan 1. Mine lasted for 16 years and so this refurbishment should last until I give up flying. The alternative is to spend $16,000 on a newer system. Then there would be the time and cost of integrating it into my systems and autopilot.

Makes you feel old when you are beyond the life of equipment.

I imagine you used LORAN or TACAN prior?

Edit: No, TACAN is military so I guess I mean VOR/DME which is civilian right?

Yeah, anyone who used these is old. Guilty myself.

At least I never used Oboe

Not that old.

Back during my brief mid 1980's flying the only nav aide I can recall is VOR's. Are those still active / used?

There are fewer of them, but yes.

VOR`s are still active.
Some NDB`s as well.

If GPS or Glonass or other satelite systems are switched off there will be chaos.
Russia is jamming satelite nav in Northern Norway from time to time .
The owners of the systems will shut them down if they deem it necessary.
So there must be some sort of back-up.

VOR info is feeded in the boxes and may be used to make fixes using trigometry.
Been a while since my last flight now so I am not updated on the latest.

I remember we started to use GPS after the war in Iraq in 1991.
On that time we used Trimble. Probably what oldgrognard is reffering to.

The first time I saw a GPS was when our owner had a Trimble box with a connected battery and antenna and we were running over the tarmac looking at the speed and track it indicated in awe.
People that watched us must have fallen apart in laughter.

Before GPS we used VOR/DME/NDB.
We also had VLF/Omega , but they often lost signal and were pretty unreliable.
Most of the intercontinental trafic used VLF/Omega. In those times separation requirements was very different than today.

Edit: I forgot Doppler.

The FMS boxes still use VORs and DMEs for trigonometric position fixes, DME/DME being the most accurate.

Russia is happily jamming GPS signals in the north. Every time you fly to Kirkenes you lose the GPS, making RNAV approaches up there pretty useless.

I also felt old recently when I noticed that my local classic rock station was playing stuff from post-2000 bands like Blink 182 and Three Doors Down. "Classic Rock" for me is 60's and 70's!

Yeah, the 70s are still 20-30 years ago, right? Right?!

At most...

Flew VOR and DME.

Few years ago there was talk about doing away with about 60% of the VORs and not fixing DME as they failed. Seems they have reconsidered about the VOR, but DME is being allowed to phase-out as it fails. I have two VOR in my plane. Had DME but it went bad about 6 years ago and I pulled it and didn’t replace it. Just didn’t make sense since I used it so seldom plus the issue of letting DME phase-out.

OG,

Really random post as I don't fly. What do you think of flight simulator's right now? I assume you use them, maybe not. Do you use them to practice flights? It may have been covered before but I would like to hear your current thoughts. I am loving Flight Sim 2020 right now. Ignore if boring, just a random thought came into my head about it and you seemed the right person to ask.

Definitely feeling old when 90's rock bands are now featured on Kool 108, Oldies for Everyone... seems to me they were playing Perry Como just last year...

I used LORAN in sport fishing for some years. Strange system

First time I used a Furono GPS I was amazed, When I finally had a boat with a chart plotter integrated with GPS I thought I was the Captain of the Enterprise...the trek one.

It was a mixed bag for me. Flight sim helped understanding flight and how flight controls worked. Helped with being able to visualize navigation. But it worked against me about rudders when taxiing and coordinated turns. I had a twist stick rather than pedals. Screwed-up my ingrained responses when taxiing and flying an actual airplane. Flight simms do a poor job at simulating landing. Doesn’t have the right feel of the changing flight feelings for all the factors of changing flight dynamics as you adjust speed and angle of attack and adjusting for every little bit of wind change. And of course there isn’t the actual seat of the pants feelings. Flight sim gauges don’t have impression of being alive like real aircraft gauges.

So they help, but not as much as you might think.

Got my refurbished Garmin 430W back from Garmin. What a nice job they did. Exterior looks brand new. Reinstalled it, but had problem that it did not pair with everything. So I figured that I should pull it and install again. Did this twice without solving all the glitches. One of the glitches was that I could receive but not transmit. Called the avionics shop on my iPhone and they said bring the plane up. Called the tower on my iPhone and got clearance to taxi with inability to transmit. Got it to the shop and avionics chief came to look at it. He tried all the hints I had tried. Then he pulled it and looked at all the connectors and pins. Everything looked good. He reinstalled and still had the glitches. So he went into its menus and made a couple changes and Ta-Da !, it all worked. So Friday I will take the plane up and verify everything is good. A big worry is if the auto-pilot will work and execute the GPS course and altitude input.

One thing that really impressed me was how perfect the screen was. Over the years it had become less bright and clear. Multiple cleanings had removed the coating on the screen. Since it slowly degraded over the years I hadn’t noticed how much it had changed. But now it is back to new and very good. The selector buttons were perfect now; no more pushing them more than once to get the selection.

So everyone send me positive vibes on Friday morning.

Are you certain that the screen wasn't actually replaced with new?

On the other hand there are many various, very interesting, technical restoration methods for all sorts of things that I have run across in various YouTube videos... there may be one that applies to such screens.

I didn’t make it clear, but yes it was a new replacement screen.

Ah. Makes perfect sense. Still I would not have been surprised if there were some technique for restoration of old to new again.

Weather forecast wasn’t correct. No flight today. So going to try tomorrow. Send those positive waves.

You'll be alright, have an enjoyable flight and everything works. I sacrificed a chicken to make it so

I didn't know that was a customary thing in Austria. You learn something new every day.

Now that’s the spirit !

I’m not worried about safety. I just want everything to work correctly. I am not very accepting of anything not being perfect.

I think I have a bit of eye of newt left... let me check the phase of the moon tonight....

We are still sacrificing turkey at this house...

So how did the flight go?

Went well. Everything was perfect. They did change a default map setting that I couldn’t remember which sub-routine set it the way I preferred. Will have to dig into the manual to find it.

But I am very happy. Screen is so much better, the buttons all work on first press, squelch was better than before, etc. Just wonderful. Now if this lasts as long as originally I am set.

For those who sent positive waves or did some ritual sacrifice, my thanks.

Great to hear that OG. Thanks for the update.

Good to hear! Those are some expensive boxes of kit, so it’s nice when they work as advertised

I flew the Diamond DA40 for the first time a few weeks ago. Didn’t like it much, although it has some good stuff going for it, especially the Jet A1-drinking ones. About half to two-thirds of the fuel consumption of an IO-360. Not a lot of room inside for such a big plane, though. I was never able to find a comfortable arm position since the stick is in the front center of the seat and the sidewall is quite close, so my arm position was awkward. Had some gusty winds, 20-35 kts 30 degrees off centreline, but the feel on landing wasn’t very good. Very flat landing attitude due to the vertical fin having a ventral extension. Landed flapless due to the winds, as they don’t improve things much in those conditions and are easy to overspeed, but still. Not my favourite airplane.

Yep; I was quite happy when I entered a GPS course in the 430 and then activated the autopilot which immediately picked up the course and adjusted to it. Some with doing VOR. Everything is good except I have to reset the default for the map direction relative to the track.

I’ve never flown a Diamond, but have sat in one. I agree about the stick and close elbow position.

Would love to take you up in my bird. Wonderful flier; better than I am.

I hope we can make that happen sometime. Same for you if you make it to Norway, there will be some flying to do