For those airplane owners installing an IFR GPS including a Garmin 430 or 530, I recommend keeping your DME if you have one in your airplane.
Look at this LOC/DME 21 aproach into KPDX for example in Portland, Oregon. The multiple stepdowns are not in the GPS approach database. If you fly this approach without a DME, you need to do "DME Math" and calculate the distance from the FAF for each stepdown. This approach is much easier to fly with an actual DME receiver. For example, using the GPS approach as loaded below I-GPO 11 is located 4nm before ROBOT and I-GPO 4 is located 2.8nm before the missed approach point; using DME the distances are exactly as charted.
Jeppesen appears to be entering more stepdown waypoints over time in their database so this situation is likely to continually improve with time.

Attachment: pdxloc.jpg (Downloaded 45 times)
____________________ Richard Kaplan, CFII
rkaplan@flyimc.com
http://www.flyimc.com
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