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v3.20 upgrade - ability to upload flight plans from pc to 430/530W

Moderated by: rkaplan   New Topic Reply Print Author Post eloigorri Member   Joined:  Fri May 22nd, 2009 Location:    Posts:  3 Status:  Offline  Posted: Fri May 22nd, 2009 10:09 am Quote Reply Hi forum   I understand there is a new firmware upgrade available from Garmin for the 430/530W range to v3.20. Apparently, this version allows you to transfer flight plans from specific software like Flitestar using a dedicated memory card, inserted into the terrain card slot. Has anyone applied this upgrade and tried this functionality? This has been a pet feature wish of mine for ages, and I am curious if it work well in practise. Being based in Asia means the whole upgrade process even one just involving a firmware upgrade is a painful and expensive process. Forewarned is forearmed! Thanks - Eduardo Attached is the Garmin bulletin covering this upgrade.     Attachment: GNC420W_SWv3.20UpgradeSupplement.pdf (Downloaded 8 times) eloigorri Member   Joined:  Fri May 22nd, 2009 Location:    Posts:  3 Status:  Offline  Posted: Sun Aug 2nd, 2009 10:22 am Quote Reply I went ahead and applied the v3.20 upgrade and can confirm that it is now possible to upload flight plans from Flitestar in to the GNS. There are a couple of gotchas to be aware of. 1. The very first time the migration software is run on your PC, you need to wait until all hard disk activity is finished before choosing to programme the flight plan card. The reason for this delay is that the software has to create a dummy terrain card image of around 64Mb which is copied across each time the card is programmed. If you attempt to program the card before the image has been created, the GNS will not recognise the flight plan card and you will get an error message as the GNS boots up. "Terrain card format not recognised". On all subseqent programmings, this image is already present so you can program the card as soon as the option becomes available. 2. When transferring flight plans with user defined waypoints, make sure your waypoint code/name are maximum 5 characters long. Flitestar has no restriction for the length of a Waypoint name, but the GNS does, and it will not import any waypoints with names longer than 5 chars. Sadly the migration software does not validate these and you only find out the problem from the GNS itself after it attempts to import the flight plan. 3. Make sure any of your user defined waypoints have descriptions of 25 characters or less. Even though the GNS does not actualy import the descriptions, the migration software bizzarely does validate these lengths and if it encounters any waypoint who's description exceeds 25 chars, it rejects the flight plan with the unhelpfull message "The file does not contain a valid flight plan". Having managed to figure all the above out with help from Garmin support and some XML hacking of my own, I have to say the system works well when used within the limitations described. I happen to fly in Asia where many of the smaller post Vietnam war airports are not in the Jepessen database, so make heavy use of the user defined waypoints feature. It is also on average 34oC on the ground here, so being able to preprogram my IFR routes before setting foot in the aircraft, and then simply uploading them is a real godsend! Cheers - Eduardo   rkaplan Administrator Joined:  Sun Jan 22nd, 2006 Location:  Uniontown, Pennsylvania USA Posts:  393 Status:  Offline  Posted: Sun Aug 2nd, 2009 12:44 pm Quote Reply Very helpful - thanks! ____________________ Richard Kaplan, CFII rkaplan@flyimc.com http://www.flyimc.com  Current time is 06:09 am

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