Garmin GTN 750 Tips & Tricks
The Garmin GTN 750 is an awesome piece of equipment. Garmin tried to make the user interface with the touch screen as simple as possible (though there still is a bit of a learning curve when moving up from a Garmin 530W). Garmin also integrated several key features that the 530W did not have that makes flying with a Garmin GTN 750 in IFR all that much better.
The two features of the Garmin GTN 750 I want to focus on today are the “Load Airway” feature and the “Hold at Waypoint” feature. If a pilot isn’t looking for these specifically, they can actually be a bit hard to find. The “Load Airway” feature is especially handy when flying IFR long distances with several airways as part of the clearance. Here’s how to utilize both.
Load Airway
- On your flight plan page, insert the waypoint that you will be joining the airway, or, if your clearance was radar vectors to join an airway, then insert the waypoint on the airway that begins the leg you will be joining on.
- Tap the waypoint you just inserted.
- A menu will pop up. Tap Load Airway.
- Select the Airway you want from the next menu that pops up.
- Then, a list of waypoints will display to exit the airway. Select the waypoint where you will be exiting the airway.
- Note: Garmin defaults to listing these waypoints alphabetically. If you unselect the “Sort Alpha” option, it will sort the waypoints by direction and distance from the entry waypoint. This is a little more practical, easier to work with, and how I recommend doing it. This way you can either scroll up or down depending on the direction of travel on the airway and find your exit waypoint.
- Tap Load.
- The Airway and all the waypoints in between your entry and exit waypoints appear in your flight plan.
- If you are getting vectors to join the airway, you’ll need to use the Activate Leg function to activate the leg you will be joining the airway on.
- On the Flight Plan page, tap the waypoint that ends the leg you want to activate.
- On the menu that pops up, tap Activate Leg.
Hold At Waypoint
The Garmin GTN 750 allows pilots to place a holding pattern at any waypoint that is in the Nav Database (or any user created waypoint). Here’s how to do it.
- On the Flight Plan page, tap the Waypoint that you want to hold at.
- On the menu that pops up, tap Hold At Waypoint
- On the next menu that pops up, input either the inbound or outbound course, right or left turns, leg time or distance, and the EFC time, then tap Load.
- You will see the hold now as a Waypoint in your flight plan.
Once the hold is entered, the GPS will go into Suspend mode, suspending the Flight Plan Waypoint Sequencing. Once you are ready to depart the hold, you will have to tap Unsuspend before crossing the holding point on the inbound leg, then the GPS will resume normal waypoint sequencing.
These are 2 of the really cool, gee-wiz features of the Garmin GTN 750. Following the above steps will make IFR flying much easier for the pilot, as well as much more enjoyable!
