Transition to Navigraph

[Kilosim 0]

Hello,

As silly as it seems some people among us don't have the money to buy a $300 subscription for Garmin's navigation data.  This is frustrating because of the fact that  I want to do many flights on VATSIM or somewhere where procedures are critical, and having months old data is not really feasible.  The question is really how hard it is to transition from Garmin to Navigraph for the data?

[JRBarrett 3,078]

11 minutes ago, Kilosim said:

Hello,

As silly as it seems some people among us don't have the money to buy a $300 subscription for Garmin's navigation data.  This is frustrating because of the fact that  I want to do many flights on VATSIM or somewhere where procedures are critical, and having months old data is not really feasible.  The question is really how hard it is to transition from Garmin to Navigraph for the data?

It is impossible to use Navigraph for RXP. The RXP units use the Garmin trainer, and the trainer can only use Garmin’s own database format, which is proprietary and encrypted. 

[Pilot_Kayden 2]

On 2/7/2024 at 5:06 PM, JRBarrett said:

It is impossible to use Navigraph for RXP. The RXP units use the Garmin trainer, and the trainer can only use Garmin’s own database format, which is proprietary and encrypted. 

I bet you feel a bit silly rn for saying that. But in all seriousness, hopefully this will inspire change. 

https://www.thresholdx.net/news/tdgtnp

 

[JRBarrett 3,078]

10 hours ago, Pilot_Kayden said:

I bet you feel a bit silly rn for saying that. But in all seriousness, hopefully this will inspire change. 

https://www.thresholdx.net/news/tdgtnp

 

I admit I’m very surprised they were able to pull this off. I had assumed the only way to update nav data for the Trainer would be to reverse engineer Garmin’s proprietary database format. Perhaps they were successful in doing so, but I have doubts that is what was done because that would subject TDS and Navigraph to legal action by Garmin. Perhaps they reached an agreement with Garmin to emulate their database format, but I have doubts that would ever happen because the database that works with the Trainer would also work with a real GTN.

I suspect that TDS may have found a way to insert their own nav data into the process space of the Garmin Trainer when it is running. It probably would not be too difficult with the right tools to find where the trainer stores waypoints in memory. A clever hack if that is what they have done.