(April 2011) SINCE ITS INTRODUCTION in 1998, Garmin’s remarkable GNS 430 navigator and its larger GNS 530 companion have become the de facto standard in aftermarket aircraft avionics. And no wonder: In the various iterations, the multifunction panel-mount units serve as a moving map, a navigation receiver, a communications transceiver, a GPS (and, later, WAAS) receiver, a flight management system and an airport and facilities database, as well as providing displays for traffic, satellite weather, lightning strikes, terrain awareness and more. In that time, Garmin has sold well more than 100,000 GNS-series navigators, making it arguably the most successful avionics product in history.
So it’s big news indeed that Garmin is announcing the successors to these navigators and that those successors are so very different in nature from the originals.
