The items of information in the stack of data fields on the right side of this screen are also mostly the pilot's choice. The top one is always the active waypoint, and below that I have bearing, track, groundspeed and distance as my selections. This information can be deleted for a larger map, but I fly with the stack displayed all the time. I found a new use for the map cursor feature on a recent trip that bisected Lakes Erie and Michigan. You can put the cursor on any point and it will tell you the bearing and distance from where you are to that point. Thus you can know the distance to the other side of the lake when starting across and can always know how far you are from either shore as you make the crossing. I had previously figured that out in other ways, but it is a lot easier with the 530.
I learned something on this trip, too. I have always calculated the distance and flown high across Lake Michigan to be within gliding distance of land all the time but haven't bothered as much with Lake Erie. Guess what? It is just as far across Erie. It might not be as deep, but it's still over my head.
I usually select the 50-mile range for the map, which, in the track up (as opposed to north up) mode, means that the map is 50 miles from bottom to top. The symbolic airplane is not at the bottom of the map; it is up about 30 percent of the distance regardless of the scale selected. That means, on the 50-mile scale, that you are actually always looking about 35 miles ahead of the airplane. However, when that cursor function is used, the symbolic airplane will fly up the screen to the point you selected. In other words, the airplane, not the map, becomes the moving feature. If desired you can use the cursor to pan around the area without changing the range of the map.
Another neat map feature is the depiction of state lines. I know that this does not have a lot to do with aerial navigation, but I often have passengers ask what state we are flying over. Maybe that tells me they have so little confidence in my navigation that they think the state is the closest I could guess our present position. With the 530 you can always show them. The map range can be extended out to 2,000 nautical miles, so you can show where the airplane is in the big picture as well. Or the map scale can be reduced to 500 feet. And, yes, it will show you right in the middle of the runway when you are right in the middle of the runway. The things displayed on the map at various ranges are up for pilot selection, and it takes a little experimenting to get them the way you want them and not have the map too cluttered at any range selection. Once it's done, though, it's unlikely there will ever be any desire to change.
There are a lot of other pages in the 530, and there's so much information that it's seldom necessary to look up frequencies or anything else. I didn't consult charts much before adding the 530 to the stack, and now I almost never use charts. For example, as you are flying along, the third nav page gives all the frequencies for the destination airport you entered in the flight plan, so there's no need to look up an ATIS, ASOS or any other frequency. This information is available for the departure airport, too, and can be viewed for any other airport along with available approaches and everything else.
