All,As some of you know I am building a KA 350 cockpit. I am looking for suggestions on the best way to implement the GPS. I have played around with the (now freeware) FlightMax and Garmin GPS's... they are not really suitable as they don't have a "full screen" mode. The FlightMax can turn off the frame but it still will not fill the display.Does anyone have any suggestions on how to implement this feature? I have not played around with a second video card with TV output to display the intrinsic FS9 GPS on... has anyone tried this as an option?Any and all suggestions welcome.Happy New Year!

Hi Mitch,If/when I build my "cockpit" (it will probably only be a single seat affair), I plan to use the RealityXP 530XP along with a small VGA-compatible monitor, driven by a PCI graphics card. I'm sorta kinda doing this now, except that I'm using a 15" monitor for both the 530XP and the aircraft instrument panel in some FS2004 aircraft (Mooney, King Air, LearJet - and by the way I'm running RealityXP's JetLine4 "glass" avionics in the latter two, which works marvelously). The 15" display is driven by a GeForce4 MX420 PCI card, which is probaly overkill but I like NVidia products and it means I can use the same drivers as for my main GeForce FX 5700 Ultra card.There is a company that has been selling smallish XVGA-compatible monitors for the last few months on EBay; here's a current example:http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAP...item=2439872931I haven't bought one yet but it's on my list. It seems almost ideal for use as an avionics display...---As I have stated in other forums (more than once!), the 530XP runs the same (16 bit, unfortunately) code as the real GNS530 box, so you would have an almost 100% accurate, instrument approach-capable GPS in your KingAir. It does run full-screen, too. (Note that I've been flying a real airplane recently that has two GNS430s in it; my 530XP experience has been incredibly helpful in getting to know my way around the GNS operating system...)The 530XP's buttons and knobs can be controlled by combinations; I'm doing this now with my PFC avionics stack. This of course allows you to drive the GPS with physical switches and knobs (see below). The downside is that there is some latency between pushing buttons or twisting knobs, but it works *reasonably* well.The disadvantage of 530XP as compared to the FSAvionics 530 that you mentioned is that it cannot run on a separate PC, since it's implemented as a gauge rather than as a more or less stand-alone program as the FSAvionics version is. The combination of 530XP and the wrapper that it runs under in WindowsXP (due to its 16 bit-ness) does extract a performance penalty of (very) roughly 5fps. On the other hand, the FSAvionics one doesn't interface with the HSI and autopilot of your aircraft, which means that it can't be used to drive the AP in Nav mode. Because of this I stopped using the FSAvionics GNS some time ago.What I'm hoping to do, eventually, is to hack a GoFlight RP48 and a P8 into physical controls for 530XP, and mount those controls close to or around the XVGA display I mentioned above, so that it more closely represents the real instrument's control layout. My plan is to get some concentric rotary encoders, such as what is used in the GF 166 radio, and hook those up to where the RP48's four rotaries are normally connected. An RP48 and the P8 combination provides enough switches and knobs to control the entire 530XP, including the radio side.---BTW although I haven't personally tried the TV-out method of displaying instruments, my gut feeling is that the resolution and interlaced display would result in a substantially inferior picture quality as compared to a VGA setup. The TV out thing was my original plan, but PCI graphics cards are relatively cheap and you can run two of them (and maybe more?) in the same PC as your main AGP graphics card. The hard part was finding small VGA/SVGA/XVGA displays - I looked for well over a year before Extreme made these 7" XVGA displays available.Well there you have it - as you can see I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. The 530XP is a key component to my simulation experience, so I would like to get my setup as close to the real thing as possible. I've even considered trying to get hold of a real 530 bezel/switch assembly, but I'll bet that would be *very* expensive.cheers,Dave Blevins

Dave,You have WAY too much time on your hands! Seriously tho, thanks for the in-depth reply. As you know, I am building a King Air using FDS panels, so I am tied to about a 5" display for the GPS. I actually have 2 of the Extremem XGA monitors (7") that you describe... these will be my PFD and ND on the pilots side... VERY nice displays! I am thinking about picking up the Regional Jet GC software from PM for this. Currently I own the Boeing avionics from PM - the whole shooting match (PFD/ND, EICAS, CDU, MCP. I will be using this for my CDU/Autopilot stuff, so I may just ue the PM NAV display for my GPS as I have all the EEFIS stuff built in and can program/change routing with the CDU.In other words, I don't know what I'm doing about this :(