Garmin 430 Question

This is for anyone that is flying with a Garmin 430...

Now that I have been flying for a week, I have finally started to look inside the cockpit (at something other than engine instrumentation!), and have noticed that the map on my 430 is not displaying any airspace data - No class B lines, no navaids, airports, etc. I have a working database, because I can "Go To" airports and such - but the only thing on the map page is black space with blue water at the coastline and lakes.

I bought my unit brand new a bit over a year ago, and while it came with a database, I did not get a subscription at the time, figuring there was no use spending $400 for a year which I wouldn't be using. I am going to subsribe this week, but am wondering if the out-of-date database is causing my lack of map data, or is it another problem? I can't find anything on this in the manual, and have already gone to the "set map" menu and restored all defaults.

Anybody?

CLR button

The "CLR" button also acts as a declutter input. At the lower left where the map scale is located you may see "-1" , "-2" or "-3". or nothing. These represent levels of declutter that may be your problem. Page 32 of my manual on "Map Page". Or you should go into the appropriate map setup page to indicate at which map scales things are shown (Page 35). The out of date database is not the problem.

You just need to set it up

Seems like it ought to be showing the class B airspace, but one thing I discovered when I first started flying my 430 was none of the airports I cared about showed up on the map.

My theory is that Garmin's believes nobody with a 430 would ever want to land their Lear jet on anything shorter than 5000 ft. I believe this also explains the ridiculous prices for database updates -- since it costs you $1000 to crank up your Lear jet, so you obviously won't mind paying that much for a database update!

There's a setting that tells it the level of detail to show on the map, and one of the settings is the minimum runway length to display.

Thanks guys - I read the part on the declutter button, and I bet that is it. I'll check in the morning when I go to fly again. I did set the runway length to something more approprate already - I think you're right, Garmin doesn't htink you'll be using their "big stuff" for small airports....


Paul