Future of 480

Ron Natalie wrote:
In 10 years I suspect the 480 will be as obsolete as the King
Nav/Com's it replaced.

Do you think the 430 has any better life expectancy. The thing
is already nearing obsolescence.

I work in a software development group. My employer is a large corporation
which has a history of acquiring other software companies. The group I'm
in has people and code from several different acquired companies. Our goal
is to take the best from all of them and end up with something which is
better than any of the ingredients.

My group's motto is "Don't name the farm animals". If you fall in love
with the cute little calf you grew up with, sooner or later you're going to
be devastated when you discover that it's been chopped up, made into
hamburger, and served to you for dinner.

The 480 is indeed a great box. I love the box. But, when you look at in
comparison to the 430/530 line, here's where it shakes out in my mind.

480: WAAS, airway database
430: Easier UI to learn

If Garmin has any brains (and I thing they have proven that they do),
they've been working hard to suppress any internal turf wars. It's bound
to happen, of course. Both the 430 and the 480 are wonderful products, and
their software development teams both have a right to be proud of their
accomplishments. But, the goal of the company (and I'm sure they knew this
before they shook hands on the buyout) has to be to do what's best for the
company in the long run. And that can't be maintaining two overlapping
product lines forever. It just doesn't make sense.

It's clear that Garmin is getting WAAS into the 430. They may be behind
schedule, but they'll get there. That leaves the only advantage to the 480
to be the airway database. Maybe they'll do that in the 430 line too,
maybe not. But that feature alone is not enough to keep the 480 product
alive forever.

My club's planes fly about 300 hours a year. If we get 10 years out of a
box that costs $10k to install, that works out to about $3/hr for us.
That's not bad. How many of us own 10 year old laptops? Or 10 year old
cell phones? Or 10 year old digital cameras? It's just the way it is with
electronics.

Roy Smith wrote:
Ron Natalie wrote:
Do you think the 430 has any better life expectancy. The thing
is already nearing obsolescence.

I work in a software development group. My employer is a large corporation
which has a history of acquiring other software companies. The group I'm
in has people and code from several different acquired companies. Our goal
is to take the best from all of them and end up with something which is
better than any of the ingredients.
...
480: WAAS, airway database
430: Easier UI to learn

I work in the industry as well (I show up in the patent database now
with more to come, it only takes 5-10 years of gov't processing). I
would agree that Garmin will keep the 430 interface and suck the
required technologies out of the 480. You gotta go to market with your
best foot. As much as us techy pilots like the features of the 480,
Garmin's bread and butter is its interface. The softkeys on the 480
just add a layer of complexity. Even simple com changes require the use
of softkeys. As a CFI I can tell you there is a HUGE population of
older pilots out there that look at you with confusion when they see
it. I already know of several avionics shops that ask "are you a techy
type guy" when you ask for a 480 quote (because I have).
However, I would add one more thing to the 480's attributes. Holding.
The holding functionality in the 480 is just awesome powerful. If
Garmin would put that in the 430 software I'd be pretty happy. The fact
that the G1000 takes nothing from the 480 and everything from the 430
tells you something. If you can drive a 430 you can drive the nav
portion of the G1000.

-Robert, CFII, MBA, BS CS

Peter R. wrote:
"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

Does that make sense?

It is not readily apparent to me why the availability of a chip ten years
from now will affect the 480 units that are installed today.

Today, would you rather own a 20 year old King radio or a Narco? I have
an old King KX-155. There are thousand out there, lots of parts and
lots of avionics people working on them. Hell, even the KX-170b still
has a HUGE install base with support for most problems.

-Robert

Robert M. Gary wrote:
I was talking to an avionics guy the other day who was turning people
away from the 480. His reasoning is that Garmin orders the required
chips in bulk lots and once they are gone they are gone. Since the 480
install base is smaller than the 430/530 and since it does not seem
that Garmin wants to move the 480 software forward (all subsequence GPS
units have been based on the 430 software) he believes that at some
point 10 years down the road, chips will not be available. He said the
same will happen for the 430 but it will take much more time since
there is such a large install base and Garmin has more of an incentive
to order additional production lots.
Does that make sense?

It seems to me the future of the 480 is more likely to be determined by
Garmin's internal political climate, and the extent to which the
acquired UPSAT engineers will have a voice in the organization, the
extent to which they can overcome the not-invented-here syndrome.

In general if you can talk with one of the acquired UPSAT engineers,
they will tell you what a great product they have and that it has a
great future. If, on the other hand, you talk to one of the old-guard
Garmin sales folks whose comfort zone is the 430/530, they won't trash
talk the 480, but they'll really want to talk about the 430/530. The
Garmin sales force hasn't bought into the 480. Shame.

The 480 has going for it: that it is far technically superior to the
430/530, is the only TSO C146 navigator out there for the piston crowd,
and that Garmin has promised TSO C146 cert for the 430/530 for years but
repeatedly misses the dates.

The 430 is lower cost. The 530 has more interfaces and is a better MFD
for more money. The 480 occupies what should be a successful niche, for
piston pilots that want the best available IFR GPS navigation and don't
need the 530's interfaces.

My opinion, worth what you paid.

One possibility is that Garmin bought the 480 to get the technology
(and the people) to TSO the 430/530 products, as well as to get the
WAAS knowledge. I can't possibly see Garmin moving forward (i.e. making
new products) with two very different interfaces. They need to continue
to have one "Garmin" look&feel. Since the G1000, and the new "mini
G1000" are totally 430 interface based, it would be hard to imagine
that some new product "G2000??" would be 480 based.

I would totally expect the 480 technology to be seen in future Garmin
products, but I would be surprised if it looked anything like the 480.

-Robert

"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

Since the 480
install base is smaller than the 430/530 and since it does not seem
that Garmin wants to move the 480 software forward (all subsequence GPS
units have been based on the 430 software) he believes that at some
point 10 years down the road, chips will not be available.

Just thought of a more real possibility: At some point within those ten
years the current GPS terminal/navigation database may not be available in
a format that can be loaded to the 480.

--
Peter

As a data point, I used to own an airplane with a Northstar M3, which was
installed before GPS navigators were approved for approach operations. It
was subsequently approach-certified. It is now obsolete, hasn't been
manufactured in years, Northstar is out of the aviation GPS business, but is
stll supported with maintenance by another company, and Jeppesen still
provides approach databases for it. It uses a PC-card format for the
database.

This has been a 10-year life cycle, probably nearing its end.



"Peter R." wrote in message
...
"Robert M. Gary" wrote:

Since the 480
install base is smaller than the 430/530 and since it does not seem
that Garmin wants to move the 480 software forward (all subsequence GPS
units have been based on the 430 software) he believes that at some
point 10 years down the road, chips will not be available.

Just thought of a more real possibility: At some point within those ten
years the current GPS terminal/navigation database may not be available in
a format that can be loaded to the 480.

--
Peter