DCS: Garmin GNS 430

When I see any type of display, unless it has a some freaky function I don’t see in life, I run away. Too much like work.

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Wouldn’t surprise me to see the option fo this in Razbam’s Super Tucano - I’m pretty sure they have a Garmin GPS bolted to the top of the cockpit panel - may be a 295, though, but this would do.

Although I will buy this, and it would be a sensible thing to have in all the non-digital navving modules, I would still feel I was letting myself down a bit if I used it.

The point of quite a few of the Hip missions is to get you to use and be proficient with it’s radio nav systems. This sort of circumvents that just a little bit. In fact, I’ve been waiting before flying Hip missions and the campaign until I was able to use the ADF etc well enough. It isn’t difficult to use, but it can be a little tricky to get it spot on.

*edit: looking around for articles and photo’s on the Tucano cockpit, I don’t see a single Garmin GPS - which has me a little baffled. Maybe they got used in FSX/P3D because there is nothing else available, but I could swear that I saw one in a RL photo - which I remember, because I had been very sceptical up to then.

*edited edit: ok - got it wrong, it was the Pilatus PC-7! :smile:

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I think this would have the most utility not only in warbirds and the Huey, but in FC3 aircraft. If implemented correctly in FC3 birds, this could introduce clickable navigation so you wouldn’t have to guess which airfield is selected for ILS, you could get SA on bullseye, etc. I’d be fine if it was implemented as a MSFS style cockpit overlay, so long as the functionality was there.

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Fun Tomcat story: The Tomcat’s INS was never great, and by the 90s it was both not great and not reliable thanks to the whole 20 years of carrier take offs and landings. LANTIRN, with it’s internal GPS helped during the attack phase, but you couldn’t really use it to navigate. So RIOs started buying commercial GPS units as a quick back up. They’d stick them to the console after take off and put them away before landing. Except one time a RIO forgot to do that last part.

Jet catches wire, GPS gets flung forward over the console, happens to hit the rocket ignite for the pilot’s ejection seat. Murphy approves as is his law, and it happens to ignite the rocket motor. Pilot gets ejected through the canopy, and the next thing he knows he’s getting fished out of the water by a helicopter. The deck crew has to go rescue the RIO who is sitting there mighty confused as to what just happened.

Of course Tomcat being Tomcat, they slapped a new canopy on, cleaned out the pilot pit and it was back in service before they knew it.

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Heatblur! this needs to be a feature.

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Start up parameter

--gps_velcro on
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I saw people have them in their L-39 Albatros as well. There’s just no 3D implementation yet. That’s exactly what I would like this module for

I’ll report back later :slight_smile:

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That would be fantastic! Looking forward to your experiments!

I Can see it’s use, but I’m sitting it out. Good old F10 map will have to do for me. I mean if realism is going out the window, might as well go all the way out.

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Yep, interested in report!

Apparently it is back seat L-39 (EDIT: the pop-up version in front seat is not VR just yet) and can be a pop-up window in the front seat.


Source: what is DCS: NS430 - Page 6 - DCS: NS 430 - ED Forums


Source: what is DCS: NS430 - Page 7 - DCS: NS 430 - ED Forums

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I don’t think aftermarket GPS units are that unrealistic. Especially not one that is so common all around the world.

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I think this is pretty cool. I’d rather have in the Mig-21 though - the doppler nav is pretty cool as is.

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As always, word on the internet turned out to be true after all, in that the NS-430 appears to be available to L-39 owners in certain versions of DCS.

Before I went ahead and gave it a go on the albatros, I popped in the open beta and see what they had to say during the training missions.

Both training missions are of high quality, with english subs and clear voice-overs. Taking you from a first look at the device to planning your flight-plan. Not every single feature is covered, as that would probably take extremely long. The FPL tutorial covers setting up a plan from your homebase to another, via a self-made LatLong waypoint.

Besides the 3D implementation already seen in other screens, it’s possible to bring up a 2D version of the device, and you can reposition and resize it as you see fit. For demonstration purposes, I decided to resize to extreme proportions so I can look at and ponder about my flight plan from the other side of the room. It’s also possible to drag the device to a another screen if you have DCS set-up like that.

If you like reading more than playing training missions, there’s some 87 pages of good documentation to be found as well.

Let’s see what this looks like from inside the albatros! After a fairly lengthy cold-start (the air-conditioning always gets me after having been away from this bird for some time…) It’s time to power up the device. Unlike what I said before, it is actually implemented in 3D, but only in the rear seat. Just like Frog said :slight_smile:

For my first flight, I decided to go with a fairly simple route. Take off from UGSB (Batumi), via the Kutaisi VORTAC to URMO(Beslan).


Decently lined up with the runway, with the nosewheel straight. Again, a small feat after being away from this plane for so long. Time to drop the hood and fly exclusively on instruments from now on.

Should I have planned some proper VNAV? Maybe…

up and away!

It seems likely I might just have cleared most of the mountains safely. I manage to make my way to KT fairly uneventfully, making use of the several NAV pages available to me. However I, apperently did not manage to fly close enough past the waypoint to activate the last waypoint… No matter…

That worked! The cruise towards URMO is smooth as well.

This is the first time something unfortunate happened. When I went to PROC to select my approach, I found out there aren’t any approaches for URMO in the device as of now. And because I was fumbling a bit with the device, I lost my flight plan. Not a big deal as I’ve quickly set up a direct route to URMO.

The only problem right now is to be doing a precision approach. Beslan doesn’t have precision PMDG equipment if I recall correctly, and it’s been to long since I’ve used it to remember as well. I decided to head north, to get as close to a proper approach to RWY10 as I can get, and figure out my way from there.

getting there…

Decided to try and line up the markers as seen on the NS-430. I’ve also tuned into them.

getting close now! Getting an accidental sneak peek from under the IFR hood.

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

are we… alive?

I touched down fairly late (possibly been gliding and hovering above the runway). But I did manage to come to a stop with a few meters to spare. Cat III equipment is obviously overrated.

Pretty awesome module, and I can’t wait to devour the manual over the coming days and come to a full understanding of all the capabilities, with some Chucks L-39 on the side. With that said it does say Early Acces in the store. And the public implementation on the L-39 might be an accidental oversight by ED, considering it’s not available for the Alabatros in the most recent beta version of DCS. The device is virtually bug-free. But I couldn’t find any other VORs or VORTACs other than Mineralnye and Kutaisi. Only a certain amount of airports seemed to have departures or approaches/arrivals in the database, and I couldn’t load any of the ones I could find. Hopefully this is all coming soon. Or better yet, user-error as my only expierence with this device has been in other sims with usually quite limited documentation.

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But could you toss it at the ejection seat :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m curious what the final module list will be, but it looks promising!

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Fantastic report as per usual @Sryan. Thanks!

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Excellent write-up @Sryan!

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Very good. Could this be turned into a main site article?

Am i a negative nancy if i say that i find the mixed signals about how the GPS package will work with regards to other modules highly confusing?

I wouldn’t say you’re being a negative nancy. Things seem to be dynamic at the moment, it is slightly confusing. There’s certainly no harm in giving it a bit for everything to settle.

I’m certainly intrigued by what I’ve seen so far. Looks like it’d be fun to play with in the F-5.

I see a lot of butthurt coming EDs way, that’s for sure.