Garmin, Ltd. has excelled in carving out markets in business and general aviation for its integrated avionics product line. We asked the Olathe, Kan., firm’s avionics product manager, Bill Stone, a quintet of questions about his company’s navigation and terrain databases: Does Garmin create its own nav and terrain databases or does it buy them from others?

The sparse imagery lofted from terrain databases by SVS circuitry is adequate for the purpose of depicting the contour of terrain an SVS-equipped aircraft is passing over, but why not make it “photo-realistic,” as in “Avatar” and other CGI-based films and video games?

Even those who follow international affairs in the most cursory way recognize that things can change at lightning speed, often for the worse. So, if you are a flight department manager with executive and other personnel based in a place where bad things are likely to happen or even possible, then you’d better have a contingency plan for organizing your people and dealing with the unexpected.