Garmin recently announced its new VHF navcomm radios that nicely complement its line of compact touchscreen GPS navigators. Sporting a crisp, high-resolution display, they are nicely equipped with a variety of handy features and a smart feature set. It was showing the radio off at Sun ‘n Fun 2024 in Florida and Aviation Consumer Editor-in-Chief Larry Anglisano got a product tour from Garmin’s Jim Alpiser.
He was neither able to pull up the CDI nor look up a frequency while moderating his demonstration. I guess they think we don’t actually watch what they’re doing when they talk. That said I would buy the product.
The SL30 also has the “monitor” functionality on both the Nav and Com, and its interface may be somewhat more intuitive. The SL30 does not have a database of frequencies built in: I think that was the only new functionality I saw.