in the Garmin GTN navigator owner survey (March 2013 Aviation Consumer), some respondents dinged the product for having a steep learning curve. Moreover, we heard from owners who took Garmin’s factory training course, commenting that it was too short—and fell short—when it came to mastering some of the subtleties of the system’s feature set.

Garmin recently extended the length of the $525 course (that’s only offered at the company’s Olathe, Kansas, support and training center) to accommodate a full two-day curriculum. They’ve also added the G500 primary flight display interface to the training.