In article ,
"Morgans" wrote:

"Jonathan Goodish" wrote

You will still have at least two cables running from the GPS: one for
power and one for the antenna.

Garmin is claiming 5 to 10 hours battery life. Scratch one cable. (use
rechargeable NiMH, and most likely increase the run time)

Many have said their 295 gets great reception with no external antenna, when
mounted on the dash, or even the yoke. Scratch second power cable.

Looks like no cables to me, are possible.

I guess if you want to use the XM music output function, you will use one
cable, to go to the intercom, or earphones.


It looks like the 396 uses a lithium-ion battery pack. Not sure that
you would gain anything if you're even able to replace that with NiMH.
If you use the backlight all the time, Garmin's claim is 5 hours, which
is maybe enough for one leg of a long trip, and then you have to take
the unit out of the airplane to charge. The only way to eliminate
running out of juice in flight is to have it plugged in to aircraft
power, so that is plus one power cable. For what it's worth, PDAs also
run on batteries and I could get 5 hours out of a PDA with full
backlight if I used an extended battery back.

Second, it is my understanding that the XM antenna only resides in the
EXTERNAL "smart" antenna, which means if you want to use XM weather, you
are required to use the external antenna. Plus one more cable.

That equals at least 2 cables running from the GPS for full
functionality.



JKG