Whats needed for many of us-and whats available-are programs or manuals for ongoing, high-level avionics training. Sometimes you need the little knob, sometimes the big one, sometimes it wants the Menu key, sometimes Enter, with no consistency apparent to the novice. The operational logic of these navigators isnt what we would call intuitive. While the primary functions of these boxes arent difficult to learn, mastery and recall of the higher tasks can be distressingly fleeting, particularly for those who dont fly every day. A significant percentage of those are dual installations, of course, but thats still a big crowd of individual pilots buzzing around trying to make a nice toy jump through its considerable hoops.
Its hard to believe the ceaseless predictions of GAs impending demise when you learn that there are now more than 40,000 Garmin GNC530 and 430 units in the field.